Lines
by Missy Jade
Summary: [PeterClaire] After four years of strain, Claire finally gets sick of pretending and Peter finally gets a clue. [Canon]
1. Prologue

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: The fabulous **gidget**, who is all made of awesome - all mistakes are my own!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst? Claire's an adult but, yes, this is canon incest. Don't read it if you don't want to, okay?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

-

**Prologue**

-

Over the last three years, Peter has come to despise Christmas in New York.

Like everything else in his life, Claire has ruined it just by being there.

And it's a nasty fact that as much as he hates her for it, he always counts down the days until she's back in New York.

Before Claire, he had always loved Christmas in New York, cold and clear and bright, when Nathan was his most pleasant and the house felt the most like a home. That was before Claire, though, before she came crashing into his life and brought it down around his head. Before Claire and after Claire— it's a straight line between the two, so sharp and clear that it never wavers.

It's the only real line left in his life, before Claire and after Claire, and he clings to it selfishly, stubbornly.

He's found that he can handle Thanksgiving well enough, and the only truly bad moments then are the silent stares and forced smiles across the dinner table, his jaw aching as he tries not to stare too hard and tries to take everything in at the same time. Even with that though, there's so much chaos at Thanksgiving that he can and does use it as a buffer when they're both wandering around the mansion pretending like the other one doesn't exist…

But Christmas is just exhausting, wears him down and leaves him drained. She always gives him looks he can't help but return, uncanny glances and quiet frowns; he always watches her move, strong legs carrying her around easily as she works to keep things feeling normal. Stands in doorways, and watches her wrap gifts; feels her eyes on him as he tries to play the uncle role he doesn't fit into no matter how hard he tries to smash himself into that damn mold.

Peter hates Christmas, but he goes back home every Christmas anyway— Claire's there and he can't stay away.

It's always the same alarming mix of panic and excitement hitting him, swamping him as he hides in his room for the first few hours - and it's the same today as he finally drops onto his bed and pulls the pillow over his head. It's childish, selfish even, but he honestly doesn't give a fuck (pardon his French) and even as he tries to hold the pillow over his ears, he strains to hear the noises drifting up from below. Claire's hollow laugh rings out abruptly, leaving him weak and bitterly giddy, scowling at himself in a useless attempt to stop it, but he listens intensely anyway, knowing she's shrugging off her favorite winter coat and checking her hair in the mirror by the front door.

Peter's pretty sure that one of these days he'll tear himself in two.

Won't help, though— Claire's fucked up his ability to die, and it would have solved everything, if he stayed dead after that fall off that amphitheater.

Before Claire and after Claire and it's a nice straight line, and he almost hates it more than he hates Christmas.

He doesn't go downstairs until he hears her finally close herself up in her room down her hall—twenty-six feet and seven inches, that's how far away she is and he can see the light under the door sway and flicker and he knows she's pacing—feigning exhaustion and an accidental nap. He rubs his face and is grateful for the imprint the bed left on his cheek from hours of being a coward; it makes it easier to pretend he had actually fallen asleep and hadn't been listening greedily to every word and sound he could pick out, memorizing them and tucking them away where nobody can touch them but him.

Peter can hear a lot, thanks to Sylar, that stupid jackass.

He spends a good amount of time hating Sylar and then hates himself for the fact that, for all the death and destruction the dead psychopath caused, Peter hates him most for bringing him and Claire crashing together. It's all Sylar's fault, he's come to decide, and when he goes to Hell (dirty uncles who want to have sex and marriage and a life with their niece always go to Hell), he's got a big list of things he's going to do to him to get him back for getting him in this mess.

Peter is well aware of the fact that his ability to keep a steady thought has gone horribly downhill.

"You missed Claire."

"I'll make it up to her tomorrow, help her make her cookies," and the lie comes easily enough as he drifts from one corner of the house to another, brushing past his brother and very carefully not looking at the white coat hanging by the door, taunting him. Claire bakes a lot during the Christmas holidays, and usually ends up shrieking at anyone who tries to help. He gets it and she gets it (idle hands always lead to touching, even when they're both refusing to say anything out loud) but nobody else does so everyone thinks it's poor-orphan-Claire, trying to recreate her childhood.

Idle hands, bad, always bad.

"Peter?"

And he glances up from that damn white coat of Claire's, finds his big brother staring at him with that look that Peter's begun to dread, one that's quietly desperate and he hates him for a moment, so much that he closes his eyes and takes a breath, dizzy from emotion. "Fine," he manages and he's nodding like a cheap bobble head as he breaks beneath the strain, pushing right past Nathan and right back up the stairs, clinging to his self-control as he carefully doesn't look at the closed door of her room.

He listens to her breathing all night as he watches infomercials on mute, and pretends he doesn't.


	2. One

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: The fabulous **gidgetzb** who is all made of awesome - any mistakes are my own!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

-

**One**

-

Peter remembers the Christmas day that Claire told them she was going to Paris, the tense hours of pregnant silences and unhappy conversation. Nathan had done a half-hearted job of protesting, but he hadn't meant it and his eyes had been light with relief that she was leaving, with some faint hope that the family would feel like it had before she had come into it. She had only ever come home for the holidays before then anyway (they pretend they're family but it's hard to pretend because it's hard to act when you don't even want to) but he remembers that when she told the family she wanted to leave, she had looked straight at him.

Peter remembers the last glance she had given him months before, a long sad smile over one shoulder before she vanished onto the plane, green eyes wet and face painfully calm. He'd tried not to actually touch her when he hugged her good-bye but her hair had brushed his face and he'd pulled from her form hurriedly, trying to ignore the brittle way she backed away and fled to her plane.

That last smile she'd given him (long, sad, helpless— and he hates that he understands it completely) had been worse than anything he'd ever seen before, and it was the hardest thing he'd ever done, to plant his feet and smile like he was a loving uncle.

He'd spent the next two weeks hiding in his apartment, wishing she'd call because he couldn't let himself.

Peter remembers it as he lies silently in his bed and listens to her stagger out of her bed and into her bathroom, listens to her climb into the shower and then swear like a sailor when she drops bottle of shampoo on her foot. Listens to her mutter to herself all the while as she picks out her clothes (he likes her best in green, bright or dark, it doesn't matter, and he hates green now because of it) and shuffles out with bare feet.

And he listens to her pause outside his door, feels the almost silent brush of her fingers against the heavy wood.

Knowing that she's standing out there makes it almost impossibly hard to grit his teeth and ignore it, palm against his face as his eyes close in weary awareness of her. It's a silent and unwavering invitation into her life, and he feels a bitter urge to shake her for it, for making it harder on them both— it's bad enough he has no real self-control, she needs to try harder, she needs to help him keep _this_ from happening.

That line that's supposed to exist, the one that's supposed to keep him from wanting her because she's _Nathan's daughter_ is nowhere to be found and he knows, too well, what it is he wants.

Wants to catch her fingers when she passes him something; wants to lift her hair to the side and press a kiss to the back of her neck and curl an arm around her waist and smooth a palm possessively across her hip; wants to explore the way her body fits together while she's sleeping against his side.

Claire isn't making it easier on him and he desperately wishes she would at least pretend she doesn't want him.

Peter wants to shake her for it, and would, if he could be sure just touching her wouldn't cause him to come undone once and for all. He had stupidly thought that her move would make it easier on him, easier to pretend she didn't exist and easier to shove her into the neatly marked space labeled "niece" as if that's all she was and ever would be. Instead, it's even more painful, counting down the days until he knew she'd be back in the states where he could look but not touch.

And now she's back, flesh and blood and right outside the door and he hates her for it and, god, he wants to touch.

"Peter?" and he hears her voice tremble under the words and he's moving before he can stop himself, unlocking the door and pulling it open, peering out to find her waiting. Her hair's tied back (it leaves her neck bare) and she's biting her lip with her teeth and, of course, wearing a dark green top because she knows he likes her in green.

"What do you want?"

"Just came to say hi, that's all."

That's not all, and she's not even trying to hide it because the emotion's making her eyes look impossibly deep right now as she pushes her hands against her stomach and just stares at him. "I've been busy," and that's not completely a lie, not really. He has his hands full with trying not to think about her and it's entirely too exhausting, trying not to want her.

"You weren't here when I got back last night."

Claire never calls it home when she comes back for her visits, he's noticed.

It's always the house or the mansion or Nathan's place or any one of a thousand names other than home.

"I was tired," he slowly manages, and that's not a lie, either— he's always tired these days.

Claire's staring at him and before he can close the door she's pressing a hand against it, pushing with more strength than most people would think she has. When he refuses to give into her silent request, her eyes flicker with a frail anger and she bites her lip harder, stepping back and wrapping her arms around her middle. "Do you want to help me bake?" and that says more than anything else because nobody's allowed into her domain during Christmas, nobody.

Except for him.

"I'm busy."

"You don't look busy," she snaps, voice sharp and harsh and, fuck, she's pissed now.

"Claire—"

"Claire?"

Peter closes his eyes for a moment, pressing his forehead against the door and taking a ragged breath, listening to Nathan stride forward and neatly step beside them, effortlessly breaking the hold Claire has on him. "I cleared out the kitchen for you, whenever you're ready to get started," his brother's saying and Claire's actually gritting her teeth (he can hear it, a long constant sound under everything else) and Peter only has eyes for Claire.

He stands silently and watches her gaze go chilly and her shoulders tighten with irritation, watches her open her mouth and then shut it with an audible click of her teeth, watches her whirl and stride down the hall, vanishing with a last flicker of green and a last flutter of blonde hair.

"She'll be busy for the next few hours."

"Yeah," Peter whispers and doesn't know what else to say with his brother now staring at him with a keen kind of desperation that he understands too fucking well. Peter wishes, for all their sakes, that none of this had happened— that Claire was the innocent niece and he was the brotherly uncle and that Nathan was the loving father and that they could all fit into the roles they were supposed to fit into.

But he doesn't feel like an uncle, not even close, and Claire's green-eyed gaze is filled with an unapologetic want and it's easier to blame her than think about how much he wants her back, the drive to have her, not just sex but a life with her. And it is a drive, a pulse under his skin and in his veins, and it leaves him shaking and light-headed in the few moments when he lets himself really feel it.

"Peter—"

"I have to get dressed," he chokes out in a rush, and slams his door in his big brother's face.

-

When Peter finally gives up on hiding (he knows that Nathan's gone to handle something at the office, and his mother's out getting her nails done and Heidi's off shopping with the boys) and heads downstairs for lunch, the kitchen smells like Claire during Christmas— flour and chocolate and the sweat from working over a hot oven.

Claire's bent over the oven and pulling out a tray and her hair's come down a bit, loose strands of blonde brushing her face as she studies her work. She's biting her top lip with her teeth, and he selfishly memorizes the image she makes as he tells himself to leave her sanctuary before she notices him, but his legs don't do what he says (self-control, that's another thing she's taken from him, ripped out of his life and he wishes he missed it more than he actually does) and he's standing and staring at her like an idiot when she tilts her head back and spots him.

The flicker of joy at the back of her gaze only lasts a moment before her face goes blank and her eyes close off to him, and she busies herself with checking the food. "They look fine," he manages but she just shakes her head, and he notices that there's a streak of flour across her neck, as if she reached up at some point to brush hair back from that spot.

"You don't know anything about baking, Mr. Hostess cake."

Claire's giving him the chance to flee but instead he watches her and hates himself for it.

"I need the—" she starts and even before she can finish, the can of Pam slides hard across the counter and comes to a halt, crashing to its side from the force of the movement.

"Sorry," he mumbles, not really meaning it because the glance she gives him over her shoulder is amused and looks like the real Claire, not the false one that walks around during Christmas pretending.

"Show off," she sighs and he shrugs uselessly, aware not only of the door behind him but also the fact that he doesn't want to go through it.

It's harder to resist, when she's standing in front of him and looking like herself.

Peter watches silently as she fiddles with dirty bowls and spoons, pushes plates around and finally throws a furious glance back at him, lips twisted into a frown. "If you're just going to stand there and stare, you should make yourself useful," she mutters and waves imperiously at the fridge; the movement makes her hair shift against her back and he memorizes that as well. It's easy, and he blames Sylar for this, too, passing him the ability to remember everything he could ever want to. "Get me the milk."

"Okay," and he obeys, pulling it out and setting it beside her before backing away again until the door's behind him, reassuring him that he can leave whenever he wants to (that's the problem, though, he doesn't _want_ to, not when she's right in front of him like this) and it's weak but he can't help it. "Do you need anything else?" He half-hopes she does, so he won't have to feel guilty for staying here and watching her in a way that an uncle is not supposed to watch his niece.

"I don't need anything from you, Uncle Peter."

Claire lays a stress on the word that lets him know that, yes, she's still pissed about the last time they talked a few hours ago— or didn't talk, since that's the real problem in everything, isn't it? She's staring at him now, half-turned towards him and waiting, gripping her whisk with a white-knuckled fist. "Well?" she demands, and he's had enough, is achingly exhausted by this. He leaves her to her anger, hating that she's staring at him like he means nothing to her.

He's out of the kitchen making a beeline for the front door even as he hears her throw the whisk to the floor and rush after him, making the kitchen door crash against the wall behind her. He grabs his coat (her coat's still hanging there. It's her favorite and he knows that because he's the one who fucking brought it for her, back when it was easy to pretend that she was just the little niece and that his heart didn't beat faster in his chest when she stared at him with wide eyes and a long sad smile) and is out the door even as she's yelling his name and insisting that he stop because they need to talk.

He can fly and he can teleport and he can do a dozen other things but he just wants to get away so he takes off into the cold, struggling into the coat and almost falling flat on his face in his haste to escape Claire's wounded anger. "Peter, stop—" And he wants to, because she's starting to cry and that always fucks him up more than anything else ever does, and she's not just crying but sobbing, sounding like she's going to break in half but he can't, because—

Peter runs, and leaves Claire sobbing on the doorstep.


	3. Two

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: Once again, the fabulous **gidgetzb** because, yeah, awesome - any mistakes are mine!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue. _

-

**Two**

-

There's only three days until Christmas and Peter is horribly aware of the fact that he's the reason Claire's in tears.

Claire looks horrible when she cries because no one looks good with swollen red eyes and a wet face as they sob and wheeze. He's seen her cry too many times during her trips back and he knows that most of those times (all of those times, if he's honest with himself) were because of him, and it just leaves him feeling more drained than he already is. He hates when he makes her cry, but he can't help the fact that he's able to make her cry more easily than anybody else seems to be able to.

Peter's exhausted after a sleepless night in the same house as Claire and his head's pounding and—

When he finally can't walk anymore, he drops onto a bench and forces himself to breathe because he's pretty sure he's about to pass out. That's what it feels like, the light-headed panic that's filling him up and hollowing him out. It never used to be this hard to breathe before Claire came into his life, and it's more proof that she's completely changed his life and he's still not sure whether he likes it or not because while change itself isn't a bad thing, losing your mind and falling in—

Having feelings like _these_ for your niece is not in any way a good thing.

What's worse, Peter doesn't actually know when it started.

If he knew, maybe he'd send Hiro back to change it (but he never would, because he'd rather be miserable than not care about her at all because she's Claire for god's sakes) or at least somehow not let his care become something else, the something else that leaves his heart bleeding because he can't let this happen.

But he doesn't know when the change itself happened, when she went from being the cheerleader to being Claire and then further (to being _his_ Claire) because that's what his instincts whisper, that she _is_ his in ways that he can't define and almost doesn't want to. He wishes she would hate him for it, would be disgusted with him for it, but all she does is stare at him the same way he knows he's staring at her, and she doesn't look at all ashamed of any of it.

Instead she cries over him leaving, and it makes it even harder.

-

Peter's spent the day wandering around a chilly New York in a fog (whether it's from exhaustion or Claire, he's not sure) and he's only half-aware of the world (the one that's not Claire and it's a stupid cliché but that doesn't make it any less true because Claire _is_ his world—damn it) by the time he lets himself into his mother's house. It's way past midnight and his fingers are numb but he doesn't mind because there's no possible way anyone could still be awake.

The lights on the tree are brilliant, so bright they're blurry, and because of that it takes too long a heartbeat to recognize the tiny shape curled up on the couch that's staring at him.

Shit.

Claire looks as bad as he feels and he wants to comfort her but he can't, because he remembers what happened last time he comforted her when she looked this fragile, this completely breakable. He remembers her showing up at his place after the damn funeral still in her black dress and coat (he hates her in black, never wants to see her in it again because it makes her look dead and just the thought of it makes his heart stutter out of fear) and he remembers her breaking down with a shudder of her shoulders as she admitted that nobody understood.

Peter remembers a wet collar that he didn't mind because she was coming to him in her heartache and nobody else and because, even though people always came running to him when they were hurting, this was Claire and she needed him. Remembers shifting her in his arms until she was tucked into his hold and into his lap and he was sure she wouldn't fade away. Remembers smoothing her hair back and tracing the curves of her face with a thumb because it's what he wanted to do to ease her pain and because she had come to him when she broke and not anyone else—

Peter remembers the moment when he realized that an uncle isn't _supposed_ to comfort a niece like this.

Claire's crying again suddenly, rubbing furiously at her eyes and he stands there stupidly, instincts screaming at him to comfort her and brain giving him a firm order of no, because his brain knows where comforting Claire will lead to. She looks like crap— blonde hair sticky with dough and face streaked with tears and flour, and her apron is lying on the floor by the couch and she's still in the green top.

"Peter—"

And just like that, he finds himself moving, tripping over his feet in his haste to get to her, suddenly wired with the urge to do something to make her feel better. Even before he's crouching in front of her, she's tightening arms around him as she sobs heavily into his neck, as she pulls him down and proceeds to plaster herself against him. "You left your phone and I was so worried—"

Shit.

He gives in now, smoothing his palms down her back and trying to calm her down as he struggles to remember that she's his niece, his brother's daughter. But she doesn't feel like his niece and no matter how much he searches her face, he finds no sign of his family or himself. She's blonde and small and strong, and fits perfectly into his arms, but he can't find any hint of what he's looking for, something to use as a fragile shield against that… _heat_ she causes inside him.

Claire has the vague smell of someone who's spent hours playing with a hot stove to avoid being terrified, but she still smells like Claire so he tries not to breathe in. Which is ridiculous and doesn't work in the slightest because he's trying to talk to her and he needs to breathe to talk. "Claire, you should—"

"If I could fix this, I would," and her breath's hot against his neck as she hitches, tightens her fingers in his shirt, presses herself impossibly close. "Nathan's pissed at you," she laughs suddenly, and it causes her form to jerk against his in a way that makes him slip an arm around her waist in some desperate attempt to keep her still. It's the wrong thing to do, the worst thing he can do, and he closes his eyes when she shifts against him, feeling his fingers slip beneath the hem of her top. "He says he's getting sick and tired of you making me cry."

"Yeah, so am I."

And she laughs again, weak and thin and muffled, but at least it's a real laugh, not one of the bitter ones that always cut his heart to shreds when he hears it. They're too close right now, he knows, and if he was a good man, he'd stand up and leave but he doesn't _want_ to. He wants to stay like this, feel her under his palms, feel her back rise and fall with her breathing.

So Peter grits his teeth and tries to pretend he's not carefully committing every second of this to his memory.

This is wrong, he tells himself desperately, even though it doesn't feel wrong and he can feel his fingers skimming across the soft skin of her back, tracing his name over and over again until he's sure it'll remain forever. He tries to move (maybe if he moves, he'll be able to stand up and walk away and pretend) but she just clings harder so he closes his eyes and drops his head forward, exhaustion (yeah, right, just exhaustion, what a crock) leaving him weak.

"Peter…"

It's nothing more than a hiss of a breath against his neck but he reacts to it (he responds to everything Claire does, a reaction to her every action and he knows it goes the other way, too, he's seen it, the way her eyes darken when they share a silent glance across a room) because he can't _not_. He feels teeth just barely scrape against the pulse that beats in his neck, feels her body arch and flex against his, a helpless effort to get as close as she can and he understands that, too.

He can't force himself to pull away, even as he tries to make himself—

They cannot have sex on the couch—

No, _no_, they can't have sex at _all_, no matter what his fucking body's telling him—

And then Claire shifts the smallest bit, tilts her head to drag her mouth lower along his neck and something snaps (or maybe it shatters or splinters, he doesn't actually know) and he kisses her hard before he can stop himself. He's kissed her before (the memory of it surfaces whenever she comes near him) but this is even more _painful_ than it was before, too much emotion struggling to get away from him before he can brace himself for it. Locks that arm tight around her waist and tilts her head back more, and lets his control slip enough to have her for just a second.

It only lasts a heartbeat (only a heartbeat before he gains control and shoves her away because he can't trust himself to just move away) but it's enough to burn her right into him all over again, leave him feeling drunk on her. Her taste is almost harder than it should be, harsher almost, but it's _Claire_, and it matches her scent, and he finds himself jerking backwards frantically until his ass hits the table and he nearly gives himself a heart attack in shock.

"Peter, please—"

No one says his name like she does, like this, and he tries not to listen to her but he does anyway, aware of how viciously he's shaking. This is what she does to him, cuts him open and leaves him healed (and whole) with the same glance, the same word. What Claire does to him is tangible, overwhelming, and it's the dizzy feeling that makes him cling to the table behind him with white-knuckled hands, and it _hurts_.

And he knows it would stop hurting if he would just let it.

"Peter—"

If she says his name again, he won't be able to hold himself back— it's a sudden knowledge that leaves him stunned and silent at the sheer force of it, at the realization of just how _close_ he is to giving up. He wants this and she wants it, and he grips the table more tightly, digging fingers into it and struggling to breathe. "Go away," he manages when he sees her open her mouth, hears her take a breath to speak and he can't let her speak.

If she says his name again, there'll be no pretending anymore.

There must be something in his voice or something on his face because she flinches as if slapped, and he's sickeningly aware of the fact that even though she started it (and that's such a stupid thought, that either of them could "start" this, as if it's something they can manage) he's the one who just truly lost control. He grips the table with trembling hands and watches her stand up and slowly ease away from him, moving as if she's endured a three day beating and even when her body's truly been shattered, she's never moved that harshly, that painfully.

He'd lost control and if she had said his name again, he'd have gone farther, found some way to go farther—

Something makes him look up (and it's the same something that's always there, the same something that never leaves) and he catches Claire as she gazes down at him, face drawn and eyes wet. She's starting to cry again, and it rips him open and hollows him out and he's come to accept that she'll never stop doing this to him. It's the only thing he can accept, though, that Claire breaks his heart without even trying.

And that he's doing the same thing to her.

Peter wonders what they did in some past life to warrant this because it's the only thing that makes sense, the only reason he can come up with to explain why they're here, staring at each other and stuck, unable to do anything else. It's not supposed to be like this, not with everything they've been through and somehow survived. Claire's crying, and it weakens him to a point where he feels a shudder go through him, feels emotion rip through him and leave him raw from it.

"Claire…" and he doesn't know what it is he suddenly wants to say but it doesn't matter anyway because she's already turned away and rushing up the stairs. By the time he forces himself up the stairs after her, her door is closed (and locked, he knows, and while that can't stop him, he'll take whatever buffer he can find) and she's sobbing.

Again, she's sobbing over him.

Peter listens to her cry all night, and pretends he doesn't; he only falls asleep for a few hours after she wakes up and leaves with a fake excuse of last minute shopping. He lies on his bed, body aching with exhaustion (and other things) and finally falls asleep— and dreams of heated skin under his palms and Claire saying everything when she murmurs his name against his neck and arches beneath him.

That day when he wakes up, two days before Christmas, Claire begins to ignore him.


	4. Three

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: Once again, **gidgetzb** because, yep, awesome - any mistakes are mine!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

Notes: I got the dinner of cold cuts from all my Christmas holidays spent with my huge German family on my grandmother's side - for the few days before our huge freaking feast, all we'd eat were big platters of cheese and lunch meats and it always worked. We never got too hungry, but we were ST ready to eat a huge meal by the time the feast itself came up. So, yeah, stole that here even though the Petrellis are Italian, not German, heh. It just fit, you know?

-

**Three**

-

Claire wakes him up from several hours of exhausting sleep by getting back a bit past noon, leaving him to lie in his bed and blearily stare at a wall, trying to get his limbs to work. He knows that when she leaves again (and just the thought of it makes him shake a bit because it keeps getting harder to watch her leave for months at a time) he'll sleep for days but he's awake now, even if he's too exhausted to actually move.

He licks his lips and instantly regrets it, sure he can taste her even though it's impossible.

Claire, Claire, Claire—

"Fuck," he breathes and weakly twists into his bed as he hears her footsteps outside his door, waits for the hitch in her movement that always reaches him when she's back for the holidays. It's always the same and when it doesn't come this time, when the sound of her path doesn't waver from the stairs to her own room, he feels something horribly fragile shift in his chest.

Peter doesn't know what it is but it's there suddenly, a vicious jerk inside him that leaves him breathless.

He somehow manages to raise his head, listening as hard as he can, hearing her drop things to the floor and open the closet, able to even hear her heart beating in her chest, fast and furiously. His eyes are still mostly glued shut but he can hear just fine, especially when it comes to Claire—

"Fuck," and he's levering himself out of the damn bed because he suddenly feels panicked and can't figure out why.

How he's getting out of bed, he's not completely sure, since he honestly can't feel his legs.

Unlocking the door, he pries it open and peers out blearily, making out her shape coming back out of her bedroom and closing her door behind her. Takes in bare feet and an unhappy black top (takes it all in within a heartbeat of a glance, a flicker of a gaze that drinks her in) and finally snaps his eyes up to meet hers, finds her staring at him bleakly, tiredly, looking even more beaten down than he feels.

And he doesn't want it to be like this, wants instead to take that bruised look out of her eyes and ease the brittle way she stands and watches him. There isn't a word he can think to describe the pull she causes in him, the ache that leaves him shaking, so he leans dully against his door and grips the knob as if it'll help him figure out how to make it all better for them both.

"Sorry I…" but she can't even finish before she simply nods slowly, carefully, as if she's about to simply shatter into pieces because it just hurts too much. The movement makes her hair fall forward to brush her face in a way that leaves his fingers itching to brush it back, hides her from him but not completely because he sees the look in her eyes and can't help but feel panicked by it.

Peter recognizes it and he doesn't want to because he knows what it means, sees it on his own face when he looks at his reflection every morning— and he's abruptly aware of how _close_ she actually is, realizes with a jerk in his middle that she's been moving towards him in short helpless steps he hasn't even seen her take. There's nothing hidden in the look she's giving him, nothing held back, and she's so much braver than he is.

He can touch her if he wants— it would simply be a matter of hooking fingers around a wrist and pulling her close, pulling her into his room and letting go of the last fragile remains of his self-control. It's what she's waiting for, he knows, and it's what he wants, to give into her, trace the long lines that make up her body until she's fevered and he forgets everything else he's ever felt except for the feel of her.

"Claire—" and, just like last night, he doesn't know what he wants to say, can't pull whatever it is out so he stands like an idiot and watches her give up. Watches as her shoulders drop and her hair falls forward the last bit, leaving him on the outside searching for any sign of her. Watches her shake her head and start moving, managing a weak smile over one shoulder that's nothing but a lie.

Peter watches her walk away this time silently, half-expecting her to simply slide to the floor and just _stop_, so completely destroyed is that last glance she had given him. But she finally turns that last corner and is gone, leaving him to stand and wait for something to change, something to shift so that they wouldn't feel like this anymore.

Shit, shit, shit, shit— "Shit."

-

Claire's always been physical with Peter, always, even when she's at her most pissed.

And right up until the day he realized why it felt the way it did, the day he realized he couldn't let them even touch one another again (because he knew with complete certainty where it would lead) it had been one of the best aspects of his life.

Claire's always been the opposite of everybody around him, the smothering press of awkwardness he had learned to deal with but never completely accept. She's always fallen easily into his arms for any reason at all— arched her neck to press a kiss against the corner of his mouth, reached up to brush his hair from his face and order him for the five hundredth time to get it cut even though she doesn't mean it, skimmed fingertips across his knuckles when things are quiet and she wanted his attention.

It's always been physical and natural, more natural than breathing, and while he's able to keep himself from touching her if he truly tries hard enough, he's never stopped craving it deep down into his bones, on some level he almost doesn't understand himself. When one of them is hurting, the other one reaches out, that's simply how it's always been, even when she was a girl in a high school with a sad little smile that brightened up because of him.

And since the day he pushed her away that first time, Claire's only managed to find new ways to touch him, accidental touches that no one would suspect because they're so innocent— an extra hesitation before she allows him to take something she's handling him, making sure to come around a corner at just the right moment to brush an arm against his, carefully sliding a palm beneath the fabric of his shirt to stroke his back for just a heartbeat when they force a family hug at the end of a holiday visit.

Claire burns him every time, sears herself into him, leaves him wanting more at the same time.

None of that happens today and by the time they take their seats around the dinner table a little bit before dusk, he's almost shaking with a desperate sort of withdrawal.

They never eat big dinners this close to the big feast but they gather together as a tense group and nervously tear their way through massive plates of lunch meat and cheese, and while Claire plays with her food, she doesn't actually eat any of it. It's gotten harder for them all to be together over the last few years and while Peter tells himself it has nothing to do with what he and Claire are caught up in, he knows that's a blatant lie.

They aren't just destroying themselves anymore; they're destroying everyone else around them as well.

Peter sits beside her (he always sits beside her during these meals) and listens to the awkward flow of attempted conversation and watches her suffer quietly and it hurts. He tries to eat his own food but doesn't manage much better than she does; he feels so sick to his stomach he doesn't want to risk anything, so he takes his time chewing tiny bites and playing with his plate as if the ceramic knows the secrets of the universe.

It's panic, he knows, but he doesn't let himself think about it any more deeply than that.

Peter's lost count of how many times she's let her leg drift over to press against his during these meals over the years, how many times she finds a way to be the one to pass him whatever condiment he needs. It doesn't happen today, not once, and he's achingly aware of the fact that Claire's so stiff-backed in her chair that it feels like she's about to splinter to pieces in a way he'll never be able to fix.

His mother's short comment about how Claire likes cheap Christmas lights too much (and it's a dig into Claire's dead family, her real family, the one she buried in a black dress and he knows how many lights the Bennet house always had every year; he's seen her pictures because she shares all of herself with him) finally forces a change, and before he can catch her wrist, she's away from the table, snapping an excuse over a shoulder about needing to check that the wrapping was all right for the boys' presents before she goes to bed.

Claire's wrapping never has a single flaw (Claire loves Christmas more than any of them) so it's not even a good lie.

Peter stops pretending to eat and settles a quiet look on his mother that only gets a tiny smile in response, Angela Petrelli looking silently pleased with herself. He loves his mother, can't pretend he doesn't, but he doesn't trust her and at the moment, he almost wants to hurt her. It's an alarming and sickening feeling he doesn't want to examine too closely, so he drops his gaze and doesn't let himself.

Before Claire and after Claire— everything's different, and this is what she's done to him.

He sits and waits until everyone finishes eating because he knows what's coming and, sure enough, he's right.

As everyone else scatters, Nathan grabs him by the arm and pulls him into their father's study for a talk about how Peter needs to stop making Claire cry (and it's always the same talk, even down to the same hand motions and head bobs) and just like always, Nathan never meets his eyes. Peter watches his big brother finally wind down and pour himself a drink with shaking hands, and hates himself for letting them all get to this point.

It's hard to look at his brother now, and it's taken him a while to understand why.

When he looks at Nathan now, he doesn't just see his big brother anymore, he doesn't just see the hero he grew up wanting to be, the perfect Petrelli he once wished he could become. He looks at Nathan now, and sees something that stands in his way, a wall to get over or dig under or (God forbid) break his way through to get to Claire. Nathan's one of the last ties that hold him back (a tie he clings to in the face of Claire) and everything's changed because of it.

"We have to be a _family_," Nathan finally says quietly, and Peter closes his eyes and nods like he agrees.

And his brother lets him go with a defeated look in his eyes, doesn't look away from his drink and Peter understands it more than he wants to as he eases away from the study and tries to keep himself downstairs. But Claire's invaded here as well, strings of lights that she seems to put up everywhere just to piss his mother off (it worked today, just like always, because Claire's good at pissing off his mother) and he understands that because Peter's lost count of how many little fights he's started with Claire in an effort to not want her.

And he's unexpectedly aware of the fact that he's watched her all day long as he starts moving up the stairs again, counting the lights as he goes, and thinking about how easy this would be if she wasn't his fucking niece. If he felt the same way about anyone else, there would be no problem, none, but because of shared blood and a lie about family, it's wrong even thought it doesn't feel _wrong_.

Peter stops, hesitates, and finally sinks his teeth into his lip hard enough that he can taste blood at the sight of Claire leaning against the wall just beside his door, shoulders slumped and head bowed. And just like always, she's instantly aware of him because her head comes up and her eyes focus on him, taking him in. This is new from her though, the defeated look in her eyes, and he suddenly wants it gone because she's not supposed to look at him like this.

He should go downstairs, but he doesn't, because—

"Claire?"

She swipes at her eyes with the heel of her hand and shakes her head, and it makes her hair fall around her face and he wishes she was wearing it back so he didn't want to brush it away from her face. That wouldn't help, though, because when she wears it back, all he can focus on is her neck, the slow curve of it, and wants to feel the beat of her pulse beneath her skin. Wants to feel it quicken because of him until it's almost a hum beneath his fingers.

"Claire," he starts weakly but can't finish because he suddenly no longer feels completely sane.

And just like last night, he doesn't know what happens (it feels like something breaks, though, and he wonders if his heart's finally given out over this) because he swiftly moves forward the last few steps and manages to touch her hand, sweep his fingers possessively across her knuckles and then twist his wrist, sliding his palm against hers for just a second (maybe not even a second, it's so fast) before she jerks her hand back and strides away to her room, shaking her head and saying nothing.

She's already said everything, though, because she reacted and he saw it all— saw the way her entire body shifted because of him, saw the way her eyes flickered shut for just a fraction of a second, saw the tiny way her lips parted and she exhaled raggedly. Heard the same breath hitch in her throat, felt the way her hand trembled a heartbeat before it tightened into a fist and slipped away in the next, leaving him alone and burning and somehow aware in a way he's never felt before.

It's not accidental, it's completely his fault, and he can't make any excuses for it, and he suddenly doesn't care.


	5. Four

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: Once again, the fabulous **gidgetzb** - any mistakes are my own!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

-

**Four**

-

Claire is avoiding him.

Peter wakes up early Christmas Eve, and no longer feels completely sane.

There's something odd inside him, something that feels brittle and sturdy at the same time, something he can't quite describe, something that he can't completely pinpoint. It's been there for a while, he knows, but it's different when he wakes up, as if it's shifted in some way it never has before. He's still tired but he's not exhausted, and he's pretty sure the fog he's in has more to do with Claire than the fact he hasn't really slept a full night for nearly a week.

He feels… odd.

Peter contemplates this change and does what he's supposed to do (helps his sister-in-law handle his nephews and helps his mother without really meaning it and doesn't meet his brother's eyes) and watches Claire out of the corner of his eyes as she melts in and out of his sight. She's wearing black (he remembers why he hates the color on her so much) and her hair's tied back from her face and he swallows roughly every time she brushes a loose strand back from her neck.

Her coat is hanging by the front door and he glances at it every time he walks near it, and the fifth time, he finally reaches out and smoothes fingertips slightly across it. He remembers when he bought it for her because she needed a good coat for winters in New York (it fits perfectly) and he knows his heart always beats too fast in his chest when he sees her wearing it. He remembers the giddy look on her face when she ripped open the box and pulled it out and stared at it, the brilliant grin she gave him over it that made him feel like he would never want anything else in his life.

Peter's worked very hard to buy her gifts that truly wouldn't delight her over the last several years, knowing that every time she gave him that grin it got harder not to reach over and smooth a thumb across the corner of it. His gift this year is in the same vein, an expensive but meaningless digital camera, and he wishes he had something else in the stupid box, wishes she would open it and tilt her head back and smile at him like he's everything she could ever want.

It's stupid to wish something like that but there it is, a quiet desperation he can't shake.

Claire is avoiding him, and the sheer level of misery it causes threatens to break any self-control he has left because it's so wrong that she isn't reacting just to the fact that he's there and watching her.

He'd tried the invisibility trick on her dozens of time (at least before all of this had happened, before he had _realized_ what had happened) and the results had always been the same—Claire would frown and glance around, gnaw her lip until her eyes always somehow settled right where he is and then finally focus. Always, then, she'd smirk and toss blonde hair back and look like the cat that ate the canary because she always knows where he is.

_Who_ he is, as cliché and ridiculous that as that might sound.

Claire knew who he was when he didn't know, knew how to find him when he was lost, as if she had some kind of second power, some kind of hyper-aware tracking system built right into her. Saved his life and gave it back to him when she said she was Claire (said it with tears in her eyes and hysterical laughter under her voice even as he watched her bones knit together) and that he knew her, and he remembers that moment in a way that he tries not to think too deeply about because he suspects _that_ was one of the moments that he's never been able to come back from.

Peter no longer feels completely sane (not that he's felt at all sane in the last few years) and it's completely unlike anything he's ever felt before.

-

There are several things that are done every Christmas in the Petrelli household.

Everybody getting together in the front room every Christmas Eve and exchanging gifts is one of them.

Peter buys Claire a real gift every year, one that he wraps up and then hides in a box in the back of his closet because the gifts that he buys here aren't gifts that an uncle should give a niece. There's simply too much meaning in them, meaning that has nothing to do with family connections or blood ties. There are several pieces of jewelry in the bottom of that box— a slim gold chain with three birthstones (one stone for Sandra, one for Noah and one for Lyle) is one that he digs out the most to stare at, and he spends too much of his time wondering how she'd look if she ever wore the diamond earrings he brought her.

Claire's never seemed to have his problem, because every gift she's given him over the years is just what he's wanted, even he didn't realize he wanted it until he opened her gift and saw what it was. They're always practical enough that no one will think twice, but they all _mean_ something. He wonders sometimes at the ignorance of the rest of his family at his reactions to some of the gifts, how they couldn't see the emotion she pulls out of him even when it's right in front of them.

She always finds a way to sit next to him and to his weak relief, today's no different.

By the time she joins the rest of them (she says she was busy with something but her smile's a lie and he knows she was just stalling) there's only two spots where she can sit, beside him and on the floor. When she slowly eases down beside him, any positive emotion it may have caused is quickly cut to pieces by the straight way she's sitting, knees together and shoulders hunched, fingers laced tight in her lap.

The careful way she's not letting herself touch him hurts in ways he can't quite wrap his brain around.

Monty and Simon are already fighting over a large box that's meant to belong to both of them— Nathan's half-heartedly attempting to referee them as Heidi and Angela struggle to pass out the rest of the gifts before the two pre-adolescent boys can trash the entire room. It leaves him to sit and pick at his jeans with his nails, straining to watch Claire out of the corner of his eye, and he already has a headache from trying to look at her without moving his head any.

She's still wearing black (he wants to go through her closet and burn everything she has that's black, he hates the color on her that much) and her hair's pulled back from her face (the earrings would look perfect, he decides, and he jerks in a sudden breath at the thought of getting to watch her put them on) and he's only barely able to stop himself when his leg tries to brush against hers.

Is this what dying feels like?

He's died a dozen times (more than that, he knows, but he doesn't like to think about it) and yet he wonders if he's never really felt it happen because this feels like dying, this right here, this tearing in his chest where his heart is and he's never felt this when he's died. "Claire…" he starts, and he can't actually hear himself (he's trying so hard to be quiet even with the yelling in front of them) but she somehow does because her head snaps around, eyes meeting his for just a heartbeat—

There's a sudden crash as one of the boys falls back into the tree, and Nathan only barely manages to keep the tree from smashing down to the floor. Claire's head snaps back the other way and she's wiping her face hard with a palm, so hard he knows she has to be hurting herself. He's light-headed, dizzy even, so he closes his eyes and takes several shaking breaths, struggling not to pass out because how would he explain that?

"Here," his mother snaps irritably (Nathan wrangles the boys to either side of the couch and drops between them looking like it's taking all of his control not to strangle them) and shoves a flat box into his hand but he can't care because—

Claire's not looking at him, though, so he drops his gaze to his lap and starts unpeeling the paper, at first staring blankly and then frowning in confusion when he opens the box and peers in. "This is from me, by the way," Nathan inserts just as Peter finally understands what he's looking at, takes it in and reads the papers and finally gets it with a sickening twist in his middle. "Nathan…"

"It's for you," his brother immediately states, and Peter concentrates even harder on breathing because he suddenly realizes how close he is to being sick. "You two were always so close, you know, and I hope this might help you two reconnect a bit…" Peter finally manages to look at Claire, takes in how fucking pale she is and how large her eyes are because she gets it just like he does. "You said you wanted to take a vacation in a few months, why not enjoy it with Claire?"

"Where…?"

"It's a penthouse," his brother sighs but he doesn't need to because Peter knows where Claire lives in Paris. He's too aware of how close this one is to Claire's, that it's a few minutes walking distance from the address on the papers in his hands to where Claire _lives_, to where Claire sleeps every night and— "Every bit as nice as Claire's, and I already made sure you have everything you could need, just a matter of prying yourself away from work for a few weeks..."

And Nathan looks so desperate that Peter wonders if, out of all of them, Nathan is the one that's suffering the most.

Since the day Claire walked into his life, Nathan's always been able to depend on Peter to reach her and help her and comfort her because no matter how much Nathan may want to, he's just not good at it. And it's only gotten _harder_ for Nathan since Noah died because Claire flinches every time Nathan even tries to be a father to her; flinches back and shakes her head and makes a bad excuse to get out of it.

Nathan's waiting for Peter to fix it, the way Peter fixes everything that really matters in Nathan's life and—

"Nathan…" Peter starts but he can't continue because Claire's still just staring at the papers in his hand with wide eyes and a frozen look on her face that could pass for a smile if anyone else was looking at her. The others don't see it but he does (sees the way her bottom lip trembles just the smallest bit and just how… _bleak_ her eyes look) because he sees everything when it comes to Claire, even if he wishes he didn't.

"Wow," she finally whispers, and slowly nods, twists her lips a bit more into a lie of a smile. "Wow," she repeats and nods more happily. "This is amazing," she laughs and flashes Nathan a grin and Peter can't help but close his eyes at how relieved Nathan looks, like some child who has just gotten the assurance he's been desperately waiting for. "This is… wonderful!" she laughs more excitedly—

"I hoped you would like it."

And Peter knows he's the only one who can hear the hysteria under her voice.


	6. Five

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: Once again, the fabulous **gidgetzb** - any mistakes are my own!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

_-_

**Five**

-

Peter Petrelli doesn't know when it happened— but he knows that she was his last thought the first time he died (and every time since that first time) and that every time he comes back, she's the first thing (the only thing) he thinks of. He knows that he's kissed her twice, and that no matter how much he tells himself they were accidents, he knows that both were his fault. He knows that every time he touches her, she burns away a little bit more of his self-control.

And he knows that it's becoming harder to believe his own lies, and it's becoming harder to pretend because of it.

None of them are holding up anymore, even though he (almost) wishes they would— Claire's young, but she's somehow older than he was at her age, braver than he's ever been in ways that make no rational sense (or maybe it does, since she can jump off a building and walk away fine and why wouldn't that leave her braver than the normal person?) and in ways that he loves her for. Claire's his niece but "niece" is just a word and a bit of shared DNA and what he feels for her is so much more painful and complicated and… somehow more _simple_ than a word and a bit of shared DNA.

Peter remembers, too clearly, the first time he kissed her, the fleeting loss of control that he's never recovered from— remembers a palm curling around the back of her neck and a thumb against her jaw and pushing her back against his brother's desk because he knew what he wanted even if he was trying not to think about it. Remembers the bruising way Claire dug her fingers into his back and pulled him closer, and that quiet _noise_ she made deep in her throat that made him shiver and the simple _feel_ of her.

Before Claire, he didn't know what he really wanted (wasn't sure what he _needed_ even if he knew he was looking for it, waiting for it) but after Claire he knows too well what he _really_ wants, is too impossibly aware of what it is he needs.

Before Claire and after Claire, and Peter isn't sure exactly when she destroyed his sanity.

And he isn't sure when he stopped missing it.

-

Nathan's gift is completely sincere, especially coming from him.

It makes this even harder.

He glances down at the papers in his hand again, takes them in and exhales slowly, raggedly, impossibly aware of Claire beside him. He can think of a thousand ways to accidentally touch her (he can be every bit as creative as she is, he knows) and so he counts back from ten over and over again as she opens Heidi's gift (a box of bath salts, and Peter works very hard not to think about _those_) and then Nathan's.

Peter now has a penthouse, in Paris, a few minutes away from where Claire lives.

This is a horrible thing, he knows, a horrible thing that will lead to other horrible things if he isn't able to control himself but—

He drops his gaze uneasily to the box between his feet, staring down at his gift of a digital camera and thinks of gifts that he can never give her. Carefully, almost tenderly, he folds the papers up and tries to put them to the side but can't (because it's an excuse to see Claire whenever he wants, and, god, he's going to burn in hell, there's no two ways about it) so he simply shifts his grip on them and grabs up the box, swallowing down something bitter at the back of his throat.

Life's not supposed to feel like this, is it?

"Here," he finally manages with false bravado, and drops the box clumsily in Claire's lap, snatching his hand back in a desperate attempt to keep any accidents (but it's never an accident, never) from happening. "From me," he adds needlessly, and goes back to studying the papers (they're just papers but they're not) in his hand. He doesn't let himself look at her, even though it wouldn't be a problem if he did— everyone else is busy talking, attention off them, and he can hear her tearing the paper open and off.

"Wow," she murmurs a long minute later, and he glances over because he can't not. "Another digital camera!" she comments with so much cheerfulness in her voice that it makes his heart heavy in his chest as he suddenly remembers that he bought her one last year, too. "My other one was wearing out!" she adds brilliantly, and drops the camera to her lap as she circles one arm around his shoulders and hugs him without actually touching him.

It only lasts a second, only a second before she's pulling back and pretending he doesn't exist anymore, but it leaves his heart beating hard in his chest. He grits his teeth and waits, and she finally passes him a medium-sized box that he takes with a greediness that most likely makes him look like an idiot. "Saw it a few months ago, thought you might like it," she explains quietly, and proceeds to stare down at her tightly-laced fingers in her lap.

Claire knows him better than anyone else, as frightening and overwhelming as that thought sometimes is.

It still surprises him, though, when he stares down into the box at a happy teddy bear in scrubs.

The little guy's dark brown and shaggy, big black eyes peering up at Peter contently, and his scrubs (that's what they are, no doubt about it) are bright blue. It's possibly the most ridiculous thing Peter's ever seen, and yet he snatches him out of the box and holds him up to look at him more closely, take in Claire's gift and savor it. There's a quiet pride in the stuffed bear in his hands, the set of his jaw and the way he watches the world with something Peter recognizes but hasn't felt in a while.

Peter wonders how crazy it is that a thirty-year old guy is giddy over a stuffed bear.

And yet, Peter already knows where he's going to put him.

He doesn't date anyway (none of the blondes he finds are what he needs or wants— their hair never falls across their back the right way, and their eyes don't get dark the way hers do, and they never say his name the way she does) and the little guy will be comfortable on the table by his bed—

"Don't you think that's a slightly ridiculous gift, Claire?"

His mother looks displeased, an unhappy glitter of something in her eyes, tapping fingers furiously against her thigh.

"I knew he'd like it," Claire snaps, and he jerks his head around, finds her white-lipped and pale, eyes dark with something that has nothing to do with him or what he does to her. Claire's never been a shrinking violet and there's something almost hateful in her gaze now, shifting protectively at Peter's side and glaring at his mother threateningly.

It should be ridiculous, the two petite women glaring at each other across the coffee table, but Peter knows them both too well. He knows what his mother's capable of and he knows what Claire's capable of when she's truly pushed to her limit and he knows, entirely too well, what he's capable of for Claire, some of the things he's done and never regretted because he did them for Claire.

Peter glances down at Claire's gift for a second and remembers helping her pack up her bears for Paris, each one carefully tucked away into one of the several boxes that had been arranged around her bed (and he remembers how awkward he had felt, walking around her bed even while he tried not to look at her) to carry them and only them. She'd been living in an apartment then, and except for the bears, it hadn't actually felt like her home.

Peter gets it, he's _living_ it—

"He's perfect," he laughs raggedly, hastily, feeling oddly flustered. Shifting awkwardly in his seat, aware of his mother's anger (and he isn't completely sure what she's so angry about) and his brother's amused gaze on him, he somehow manages a grin at his mother, waving the bear happily. "He's perfect," he repeats more giddily, and bounces the bear a few times merrily, "he's like my own little mascot!"

Peter suspects that he sounds like a complete idiot but he can't care because all he can see is Claire.

She's staring at him oddly, brows slightly furrowed and eyes a bit too wide, but she's really _staring_ at him.

It's horribly stupid, he knows, to sit here and gaze at her like this in the middle of a family gathering, but—

Peter is impossibly aware of the moment when she finally reacts to him, sees everything that nobody else ever could.

Sees the way her lips part the smallest bit and her fingers suddenly tangle together in her lap and the way her eyes darken in a way that a good uncle (and he's not a good uncle, not at all) is not _supposed_ to see but _does_ and the skin around her neck flushes the smallest bit and he wonders, abruptly, how far the flush goes down under her top—

Shit.

"I love him," he laughs and jumps to his feet with so much force that he nearly falls flat on his face. Instead of letting himself think about how stupid he looks, he waves the bear around like an idiot because he needs to be as far away from Claire as he can be. "I need to put him up before something horrible happens to him." An awkward pause as his family stares at him in amusement (except for Claire, because she's staring down at her twisted fingers in her lap) and then he laughs again as he carefully backs away from them. "He's my little mascot!"

Shit.

By the time he reaches his room he's shaking (not just his hands but his entire body) and light-headed, breath coming too fast. Heart thundering in his chest, he finally manages to get himself into his room, leaning back against the door as he closes his eyes and tries to keep himself under control, trying to bring up every reason why it's wrong and not able to summon a single one.

All he can think about are green eyes that grow impossibly dark and flour that smudges Claire's neck as she bakes—

Shit.

When he looks down at the bear in his hands, it seems to be glaring up at him, looking deeply annoyed.

Peter knows what he wants and, exhausted in ways that he's never been before, he drops his head back against the door (it's almost funny, the sound it makes) and gives in for just a heartbeat, biting the inside of one cheek until he can taste blood. Lets himself think about her for a few seconds, think about skin beneath his palms and that sound she's made both times he's kissed her, that one that comes from deep in her throat—

"I'm so... _fucked_," he finally breathes (or maybe it's a whimper, he's not sure) and proceeds to slam his head back against the door again. Does it again and then again, and if he didn't feel like this (like he's dying) he'd be able to laugh at the image he probably presents, some scrawny guy who finally seems to be losing his mind after a few years of jumping off roofs and exploding—

He's in the middle of banging his head again when he finally hears her, a soft voice reaching him through the unfortunate door that he's taking his frustration (and, yes, there's an extra special kind of frustration right now, one he can't think about but, god, it's there) out on.

He has just enough time to drag in a strangled breath when he hears her voice again, jolting in a startled kind of horror when she jiggles the doorknob violently and pushes hard against the wood. "Peter?" There's the unmistakable flat sound of a palm slapping the door, a brutal movement of helpless aggravation he understands too well.

"Peter, let me in—" and she smacks the door again, voice harsh in a way that warns she's about to cry, "Let me in right now, Peter, we have to talk about this."

They can't, not right now, not with his blood burning like this.

"Peter…" This time, she doesn't even strike the door; she simply presses herself against it, and he can see it clearly in his mind, the way she looks as she pushes herself hard against the surface of it, as if she can just force her way through and reach him if she tries hard enough. "Peter— Peter, let me in—"

Peter's weak, horribly so, heated and light-headed, too completely aware of what he wants, what he needs—

He's weak but he must not care anymore because he sets the bear carefully on the desk by the door, finds the bear staring at him with what looks suspiciously like arrogance as he sits there in his bright blue scrubs. Exhausted and aching, sick and tired of it, he cautiously unlocks the door and twists the knob, hears Claire fall into a stunned silence at the fact that he's seemingly given in. When he finally glances out, she's staring at him with wide eyes, face flushed with fury and something else.

They're going to talk, that's all, nothing else—

This is stupid, impossibly stupid, more stupid and more idiotic than anything he's done before—

"Just to talk," he snaps raggedly and steps back a little bit, allowing her to push her way into his room. She slips fast around him (her hair brushes his arm) and he can smell her, not just the lotion she uses or her shampoo but _her_, hints of what it would be like to burrow his face in the curve of her neck during the nights, what he could have if he'd just give in—

"Just to talk," he repeats weakly as he turns to find her staring at him.

And he knows it's a lie and he doesn't care.


	7. Six

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: Once again, the fabulous **gidgetzb** - any mistakes are my own!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

_-_

**Six**

_-_

It isn't just the sex, and that makes it harder somehow.

There is lust there, a painful heat she ignites deep inside him, something he's never felt before in his life.

The lust, he finds, is no little thing and he knows what he wants—wants to commit her to memory until he's sure she's completely his, until he can't remember anything else; wants to sweep his fingers across every curve he can find until he's no longer sure where he ends and she begins; wants to taste that place at the back of her neck, the one that so fascinates him, and close his eyes and breathe her in until she's the only thing he's aware of.

Peter wants her in ways that leave him dizzy, light-headed, shaking with the force of it.

It's deeper than lust though, and it's that deeper that he never lets himself think about, not really.

Though he's never let himself think about it, he remembers the moment when he realized what it was he wanted.

When he first found himself staring at a happy couple nearby his apartment, he didn't grasp it, wasn't even truly aware of it. The third time he finally realized he was doing it, but it wasn't until the fifth time that he understood why he stared at them so silently, so quietly, dark eyes taking in every touch and grin, the casual flirting and care, hating them for it with a jealousy that he had never felt before Claire had crashed into his life.

It's envy, heavy and smothering, and he feels it every time he looks around and finds himself surrounded by lovers. It doesn't matter what they look like (his heart splintered especially hard once, though, when some scrawny guy with dark hair brushed blonde curls from a soft face and kissed her neck until she laughed hysterically) because it's the slight things he finds himself noticing every time. The little touches and the silent smiles and the breathless whispers, and they never realize how lucky they are, any of them.

He knows (although he never lets himself think about it) that it's why his attempts to date have failed so miserably.

Because it isn't just sex, isn't just lust, isn't just the burn she causes but the ache she leaves when it fades.

-

This is stupid.

This is a stupid thing to do, letting her into his room when he feels like this.

"What was that?"

When Peter glances at her warily, uneasily, he finds Claire standing awkwardly just a few feet away, between him and his bed and he's too aware of it, of what he sees behind her. He's not sure what he feels at the moment (or, rather, he does but he's too much of a coward to really think about it) but he knows she looks odd, flustered, arms tight across her chest and fingers digging into her arms hard.

"I don't know what you're—"

But she jumps down his throat, so fast and so sudden he falls back a step before her, unnerved at the way she comes at him, face dark with emotion. "That look you gave me down there," she snaps, and although her voice is clipped, quiet, he can hear her perfectly, short angry words that cut at him the way only hers can. "What the Hell was that?" she demands heatedly and her voice cracks on the last word, breaks with unspoken emotion he understands and wishes he didn't.

It breaks his heart, makes it harder to breathe, harder not to reach out and touch her, not to comfort her.

Claire spends most of her year thousands of miles away but it doesn't help, not really, because he still wants her as much as he always does, still wakes up in the nights thinking about innocent touches that are anything but for them, the way she always tucks herself against him when she settles in his arms, the sweep of her back under his hand. Nothing's he's tried has eased that want and it's gotten stronger, more painful, leaves him exhausted in the nights because when he really lets himself sleep, Claire's there, the way he wants her to be.

Sharing a life with him, everyone else in the world be damned.

"It was nothing—" he starts in a voice that he doesn't trust (he's thinking too much about things and she's standing too close to him because he can feel her, feel how close she is) but she just shoves him, face flushing and bottom lip trembling with emotion that matches the way her eyes are filling up with tears again.

"You're such a fucking asshole," she explodes in the next second and, even though he doesn't want to, he understands it.

If they could just hate each other, maybe it would be easier.

They're supposed to talk, that was why he had let her in (that was just his excuse) but they're not talking, just tripping over themselves in some kind of sincere but misguided attempt to do the right thing for everyone involved.

It was stupid to give in the way he had downstairs (stupid to look at her the way he had) and not just because it was in front of their family but because he made it harder on her, too—she's crying again and once again it's his fault because he has no control, not when it comes to Claire. He has lies (but those are breaking down, crumbling more rapidly the more desperately he tries to hold onto them) and he has Nathan but he doesn't how much longer he'll be able to use Nathan as an excuse. He tries to think of his brother (of her father, the father that privately grieved for her for years) when he looks at her but it's impossible because when he looks at Claire, all he can see is Claire—

"Claire—"

"I feel like I'm dying," and the way she says it, the way the words slip out in a soundless whisper— "I feel like this is killing me," she continues and he can't help it, he moves forward, reaches out and slides a palm across her face, pushes blonde hair back as she seems to simply come apart at the seams, managing an almost childish final shove at him (it's not even impressive, as if she's just lost all strength) before she crumbles against him with guttural sob and a shudder.

"Claire—"

But he can't make himself speak anymore, not as she curls herself into him and shakes, fits herself against him and cries quietly. Instead he wraps his arms around her and keeps her from sliding to the ground, buries his face in her hair and breathes in the scent of her, finding the smallest of brittle consolation just from holding her, touching her, comforting her.

This is stupid, but he doesn't care anymore and he doesn't know when he stopped.

"It hurts," she mumbles weakly a long minute later and though her voice is muffled against him, he knows what she says. He nods slowly (knowing she knows that he gets it) and threads fingers through blonde hair, and then holds her more tightly when he feels the smallest tremble race through her, up her spine and across her shoulders; closes his eyes tightly when he feels fingertips brush his back, sliding beneath his shirt.

Peter had never been a fan of big romantic movies, the ridiculous ones where two characters that make no actual sense together would right out of the blue start eating each others' faces after only a few minutes apart, tearing at each other like wolves. But he really gets it now, gets how emotion like this can become so utterly uncontrollable, can take somebody over until all that matters is that other person and touching them, feeling them—

He knows what's coming before it happens but he doesn't even try to stop, doesn't want to anyway.

Peter picks up on the tiny way Claire shifts in his arms, shifts against him in a way that causes an abrupt rush of heat to leave him shaking, shifts until her breath burns his neck and she murmurs his name straight into his skin. He's less aware of his own shifting, though, less aware of how one palm settles possessively against her back and the other slides around her neck, tugging her closer in restless movements that nonetheless work.

"We shouldn't," he mumbles weakly and she nods against him, in complete agreement even as she brushes her lips against his pulse and breathes his name again, even as she presses herself tight against him in a way that makes it impossible to think of anything else. "We really shouldn't, they're right downstairs," he insists but he doesn't mean it, doesn't care anymore as he gives in with a last jolt of emotion, responds to her slight kiss with an almost bruising one of his own.

Peter gets it now, how you can want someone so badly that you die without them.

Peter gets it as he knots fingers into her hair and tilts her head back enough to really taste her, palm leaving her back to cradle her neck, and she makes that noise, that sound she made before but it's even deeper now, harsh almost, and it makes him react in a way he's never experienced before, an unexpected spike of need that erases anything else except for what she does to him, how she fits in his arms—

"Peter—"

It's a groan into his mouth and there's something of that noise in it, and he feels something horribly tight inside him snap, splinter, as he kisses her harder, feels her nails dig into his back as she makes that sound again, that noise he can't name. Feels the way Claire arches against him and the way her she presses her tongue against his with that noise that burns away whatever tiny part is left of his self-control, whatever part he's been able to cling to for the last several years.

The force of this is different, sharper and deeper, and while he's been aware of it before, it's completely there now, settles inside him even as he knows with a shattering certainty that it's always _been_ there.

Feels of the spike of it and pulls away because of it (and the noise she makes is tiny and helpless and almost breaks his resolve) to stare down at her, eyes impossibly dark and face flushed, takes her in as something inside him carefully works itself out. "We have to," he starts and then he stops in surprise, not able to recognize his own voice. He jerks in a breath, and lets it out. "Just…" and he shifts his hold on her, freezes when she flinches as if he's just slapped her. "Just, I have to think," and when she opens her mouth, looking flustered, he presses a thumb against her lips in some attempt to figure something out.

Peter regrets it when she grazes the pad of his thumb with her teeth for just a moment, something possessive and dark flickering in her eyes that makes that something inside him spike painfully again, makes him choke on his breath and catch her more tightly in his arms. "Claire—"

She drops her head against his chest and makes a tiny helpless noise, so small that he smoothes her hair back as well as he can with shaking hands, slides a palm down her back in a quiet attempt to keep her from falling to pieces. "Paris," he finally manages, and that's it, that's what his brain's been telling him in a desperate little voice even as it lost control, got washed away in a flood of heat. "Paris," he repeats and he's almost panting as she tilts her head back to stare at him, wide-eyed and confused.

"Paris?"

"Paris," he babbles and gives in for a moment, kisses her hard and fast and pulls away before she can return it. "Paris, that's it, we just have to hold on until Paris."

"No, Peter—" but he catches her arms just as she moves toward him again, against him, curls his fingers into her curves and fights himself as he stares at her hard. He doesn't feel sane (and there's something, some nagging little voice in his head trying to say something but he can't figure out what) and he doesn't care and something passes over her face as she hesitates finally, as if she's just seen something in his eyes. "Peter..."

He just stares at her and she finally pulls away, steps back and frowns, looking calmly confused as she brushes hair away from her face and nods slowly. She moves around, very carefully not touching him, and it's all so quiet that they both flinch when she unlocks the door and pulls it open. She pauses there, though, pauses and stares at him with an odd look on her face. "I'm, um… I'm down the hall," she finally murmurs and he watches, trembling, as she closes his door behind her.

Only when her footsteps fade away does he allow himself to sag against the nearest surface, weak.

And Peter's entire body is shaking as he slides down against the door to pool there, closes his eyes and shudders and tries to remember how to breathe now that Claire's gone. They're still in the same house, though, and he's aware of her somehow, aware of the fact that she sleeps twenty-six feet and seven inches from where he's sitting right now.

Paris, he thinks as he shakes like a frightened animal and thinks about Claire and ignores the little nagging voice in his head that insists he's still getting it wrong—Paris will be the solution to all their problems.

-

_First off, many thanks for all of the amazing feedback because, wow, it's amazing and completely stunning to read, every bit of it, knowing that I've managed to bring across even a bit of the emotion that makes these two so wonderful to write, you know? And two, this story has been mapped out in advance and yes, we're getting somewhere and, yes, there will be a final resolution - one that I do believe most (if not all) people will be pleased with, heh._

_Once again, thanks so much for the feedback - it's truly incredible._


	8. Seven

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: Once again, the fabulous **gidgetzb** - any mistakes are my own!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

_-_

**Seven**

_-_

The night after he almost let himself have Claire, Peter's dreams are a mess.

A jarring mix of Claire and shadows, buried in the silence of everything except for her quiet breathing as he slides his fingers across her curves and presses his lips against her hip, enjoying the faint scrape of her nails against the back of his neck. He can't see her for some reason, can only make out vague flashes of pale skin made silver by dim moonlight, but he still wakes up sweating and shaking an hour or so past midnight, lungs filled with the scent of her and his body heated.

He's had dreams like this before (nearly every night, if he's honest) but this is somehow different, jarring enough to destroy any hope he has of getting any more sleep. Peter gives up and hides in his shower for a good hour before coming out and falling back onto his bed, closing his eyes and forcing himself to breathe, not sure what he's going to do when the household wakes up in a few hours.

Claire's only a little bit away, and it would be so easy, to slip into her room and give them both what they want.

Three times now, he's lost control, but that third time—

It's been roughly a day since he kissed Claire in his room, swallowed that noise that came from deep in her throat and felt her shake in his arms with a savage kind of force. It's been roughly a day since she murmured his name into his skin and dug her nails into his back and pushed herself against him in a way that made it impossible to think about anything other than her, roughly a day since he almost let himself have her.

There's something new and sharp about it now, about the way he finds himself watching her when she happens to walk by, something she somehow senses because she keeps faltering under his gaze, keeps staring at him from under her lashes. He isn't ready to think about it yet (he isn't ready for anything right now even though he is at the same time) but he can't stop himself, can only stare and take her in with dizzying spikes of emotion.

It's stupid to look at her the way he does but he doesn't care anymore and he can't even if he wanted to.

Claire's wearing green when they finally sit down at the table for Christmas dinner.

It's a simple top that looks good on her, brings out the darker shades in her eyes, and she wears her hair pulled back from her face, loose strands trailing across the curve of her neck as she shifts awkwardly beside him. But her eyes are on a spot on the wall across the room from her, and she has the vague look of someone at the end of her rope.

Peter's always wondered what Christmas dinner was like for Claire when she still had her family, and he's found himself confronted with several glimpses into it over the years, a playful mix of sincerity and safety, a level of relaxation that the Petrellis can't handle. It isn't that the Petrellis are any less than the Bennets so much as the fact that, over the years dancing between social circles, his family seems to have lost the ability to be sincere.

The world, Peter has found, operates on the idea that sincerity is weakness, something to be shed or at the least warped into an unrecognizable sentiment— and while he will never understand it, he accepts it, however bitter the pill is to swallow.

There is something ironic about the fact that, for all his lies, Noah Bennet had managed to keep his sincerity.

It leaves Peter to feel even more like a piece of shit for his current predicament, for wanting so badly to give in.

Sometimes he wonders if Noah Bennet was aware of more than Peter had tried to let him see, but he isn't sure— the older man had just been too good at his gift of duplicity and even Peter found it impossible to completely understand him. There had been moments, times when Noah had called him with a slightly fatherly air that had been awkwardly comforting, seemingly innocent suggestions to call Claire and see how she was, spend some time with her.

Even then, Peter knows, she'd been impossibly stressed, and he has the horrible suspicion that it was about him. He remembers the faintly trapped glances in those last few months before the funeral, finding her sitting in silence and looking completely shattered, trying to steal time with him and staring at him too hard when she didn't think he was aware of it.

It's an unsettling idea, that she's already gone through the wringer he finds himself in now.

Things, he saw now, had been getting confusing even then, and he's sickeningly aware of the fact that he'd been looking at her in ways that an uncle wasn't supposed to look at his niece before he'd been aware of doing it. He had no idea when it happened, and yet he still tries to figure it out, pinpoint the exact moment when he looked at her and wanted her the way he does now.

It happened, though, and it's proving to be impossible not to want her.

He glances at her now, a quick nervous look that takes her in (takes in a bare neck and a green top that brings out the darker shades in her eyes) and then drops his gaze back to his plate, to the heavy food that Claire still hasn't completely learned to enjoy. It's cliché (Claire seems to think so, judging by the way her neck and face flushes when she talks about it) but she prefers the foods she grew up on, BBQ and chili, and she constantly mutters that the Petrellis wouldn't know good food if it bit them in the ass.

She can actually cook BBQ, or so she threatens in the rare moments when they forget themselves, she says the words and although she always says them with a laugh, he somehow knows she's not joking at all.

It's a ridiculous image, his tiny Claire stabbing hunks of meat with a handheld… pitchfork.

Amused, lips twitching at the picture it presents, he takes another bite, glancing over and watching as she chews slowly, looking straight enough in her chair that he's almost afraid she'd going to come apart from the sheer strain to her back. His own spine aches in sympathy, enough that he's forced to shift as bit in his seat, regretting it when it makes her glance over quickly, eyes shuttered but still heavy with emotion.

Only Claire, he's come to realize, can break his heart without saying a word.

Flustered, unsettled, Peter goes back to his food but doesn't taste it, fingers and palms burning in remembrance of soft skin, of long blonde hair that captures his attention just by falling down her back and across her neck. He feels fragile (brittle and breakable) when he glances over again and finds her stabbing her food with a force that makes him pity it, and something painful strains inside him.

He has no idea what comes over him, not even years later looking back on it.

"I'll be going to Paris with Claire, when she goes back next week," he blurts out, sounding shockingly calm to his own flustered ears, freezing suddenly as he realizes what it is he just said. Monty and Simon don't stop their bickering (it keeps Heidi busy, as well, something that Peter's privately grateful for) but his brother pauses, fork freezing in mid-air as he cocks an eyebrow in surprise.

"You will?" his brother asks slowly, and their mother, Peter notices, looks like she just swallowed an old egg.

It almost makes him want to laugh, the way she stares at him, eyes narrowed in concentration.

"We talked about it," Peter continues, heart beating too fast in his chest as he tries not to look at Claire, aware of the fact that she's staring at him in shock, speechless. "Last night, we talked about it, after the gifts," and he nods, taking a sip of the closest thing he can grab, trying not to choke on the food that's suddenly lodged in his throat. "I need a vacation anyway."

No, he needs _Claire_, but he's not going to say that out loud.

Peter jerks his head to the side, finds Claire and smiles overly brightly, jaw aching. "We talked about it, didn't we?"

He's not lying, exactly, but it wasn't talking they were doing last night and he sees it on her face, sees her react to the memory of it, her eyes darkening as heat spreads up her neck. He can never miss these things, the way she responds to him, and it's almost comical that nobody else ever sees it. "We did," she finally exhales, nodding in a way that makes strands of hair fall against her cheek— he notices that, too, and grabs his fork to keep from pushing it from her face. "We talked about it last night."

"Well, that was quick."

"You were right," Peter shrugs, and looks at Claire again, finds her shifting in her chair and worrying her bottom lip in a way he's not supposed to notice because he's her uncle. He notices it, though, and hurriedly looks away, meets his brother's strong gaze across the table with a jerky grin. "You were right and Claire convinced me."

If looks could kill, the look his mother was giving him would have dropped him on the spot.

He would have expected the glare to be aimed at Claire or even Nathan but it's a shock when he finds it focused on him, an annoyed glance that he can't decipher even though he has always been able to pick up on his mother's moods. In the next moment, her attention is off him, so suddenly he wonders if he was imagining things, or had been mistaken.

"I thought it would take a bit more convincing, Pete—"

"I have my ways of getting what I want," Claire states bluntly, flatly, and gives Peter a look that makes him freeze, unnerved by the suspicion in it, the edges in it. She stares at him like he's trying to pull one over on her and it leaves him scrambling, confused by it, the force of it. "Like grandma says, I'm spoiled, right?"

"You're as much my granddaughter as Noah Bennet was my son."

Monty and Simon freeze in the middle of elbowing each other, eyebrows lifting as they exchange a stunned look.

As words go, Angela's said harsher ones, far harsher comments to people she loves on a regular basis— his mother has a talent with words, can use them to fix or destroy anyone given enough time to see how they tick. He wonders if that's where he gets it from, the understanding of how people work, but he tries not to think about it too much, since it leaves him feeling uncomfortable.

He's nothing like his mother, at least not in that way.

Even so, even though she's capable of saying worse, the words do their damage, cause Claire to jerk in a sudden breath, mouth tightening down in a way that makes him swallow, dropping his fork and reaching out to grab her arm and keep her calm. She wrenches away too fast, though, slams her palms to the table as she twists to her feet.

"Fuck you," Claire finally tells his mother flatly, and strides out of the room like a queen.

It's brutal and raw, has none of his mother's grace and it's harsh because of it; the words can't settle the way his mother's carefully chosen words always do, can't be ignored. Shaken, he gets to his feet, sympathy for his brother lessening at the faintly panicked look Nathan casts Angela, clearly torn between his daughter and their mother.

It's too much for Peter to deal with and besides, Claire needs him—

Infuriated, wired with emotion, Peter follows after her, family forgotten as he pauses just outside the dining room, trying to calm himself down. That overwhelming spike of emotion flares inside him again (it hasn't left but it keeps flaring, tightening inside him, harder each time) and he takes off only to hesitate in the second floor hallway at the sight of her walking back and forth and swearing raggedly, literally shaking with emotion.

"Claire—"

"Your mother's a bitch," she snaps, voice shaking as she swipes violently at her face, wipes away tears.

"Claire—"

This is familiar, brings a rush of emotion and he closes his eyes, unnerved, remembering last night.

But when he opens his eyes, she's still staring up at him, eyes too bright and mouth trembling, looking tiny and fragile, an image that makes it hard not to pull her into his arms and comfort her. She's always been small but she looks helpless now and it affects him, weakens him in a way that he wants to give into. "It's okay, I… have a plan," he finishes lamely, when her only response is to stare at him like he's an idiot. "Claire—"

"Yeah, we'll fuck in Paris and then come back and play family."

He can't help it; he flinches back from the words that cut him off at the knees, unsettled at hearing them out loud.

"That's not… what this is—"

But she doesn't want to listen (he can't blame her, not really, and he understands too well) so she whirls with a shudder and a brutal noise in her throat, her small form moving in a blur of motion away from him and towards her room.

Peter rushes after her, upset and heated, hating the glint of betrayal in her eyes and everything about this. He pushes himself forward the last few steps, squeezes in past her and pushes her to the side, smashing the door closed with a force that makes the glass of her windows rattle in the frames. Even as she gapes at him, almost comical in her shock, he leans back against the door, planting his feet.

They're in a bedroom again, hers instead of his, but still, here they are and it's overwhelming proof that he's an idiot.

"It's not what you think…" and he doesn't know what came over him at the table but doesn't care anymore anyway, can't take it back anyway even if he did— Peter just desperately wants her to stop looking at him like he's done something unforgivable because that, he's completely sure, is not something he can deal with any longer.

He isn't sure how much longer he can deal with any of this, Paris or not. 


	9. Eight

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: Once again, the fabulous **gidgetzb** - any mistakes are my own!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

_-_

**Eight**

_-_

Claire doesn't just make it hard to think; she makes it hard to even _want_ to think.

Thinking leads to pain, leads to thoughts of why it's (supposed to be) wrong.

With Claire, he just _feels_— and it was like that even before she was _Claire_.

Peter remembers the painting, the cheerleader on Isaac's wall, how she tore at him even then, pulled at him, had the startling ability to make him feel alive in ways that were frightening and exhilarating.

Claire brings out _all_ of him, parts he keeps tucked away for fear of them being beaten down, parts that make his heart beat faster and his blood heat in his veins, parts that no one else has ever reached - not because he won't let anyone but because they just _can't_.

Life since Claire had first crashed into him (small and blonde and brilliant in ways nobody else had ever let themselves be) has been one extreme after another, dragging at him in a way that he wants to hate but can't, not really.

There's no compromise in what Claire makes him feel.

There's no straight place where he can catch his breath and find his balance; never any moment when he can draw a line and feel secure in it. The giddy joy he feels when he looks up and finds her staring at him with her heart in her eyes is only ever matched by the hollow ache that builds inside him as he realizes that, since she's there, she's going to leave again soon.

Peter's horribly aware of the fact that he enjoys them too much, the brief moments when he can force himself to stop thinking, when he can drown in what she makes him feel, the draw of heat and something deeper, the way she says his name and touches him however she can.  
The way she wants him, looks at him, doesn't even try to hide it, as if she's given up on lying about it—

Peter feels like shit because of it, hurts in a way that should kill him but can't.

-

"This feels a bit familiar."

Claire's trying to lighten the mood, and Peter loves her even more for trying even though it's useless.

"Sorry," but he isn't, not really, so he stops talking.

People always talk about awkward silences but they can't know, not the way he does and he's vaguely irritated by it, by the way people always fall back on the phrase even though they can't possibly understand what it really means. This is awkward, wanting his niece the way he does, body aching with a need that goes far deeper than anything he can begin to make any kind of sense of, deeper than the quiet lust he'd known before Claire.

This is a true awkward silence, one that hurts because they never used to be awkward, not him and Claire.

But he can't speak even though he's really trying, ears ringing (burning) with her words.

Peter doesn't want to think about it because it hurts, because it's a wall he keeps running into, one he doesn't want to dig under or climb over or break through, one he doesn't want to… understand.

It's not fair; it shouldn't be like this—he should be able to bring her home to meet the family, show off the tiny young woman with the brilliant green eyes and long blonde hair that owned him, the young woman he wants a life with.

Instead, they have this, shared DNA and lies that strangled them, exchanging weak looks across dinner tables and touching each other in ways that uncles and nieces shouldn't.

Life isn't fair.

"You jump from a digital camera to a trip to Paris with me?"

Her voice is soft, a breath, but it clogs his throat and makes him shift, heart stuttering painfully in his chest.

"I'm sorry about the camera—"

"I don't care about the camera—" she starts before her voice cracks and she goes abruptly quiet, pressing her fingertips against her face and breathing raggedly in a way that almost breaks him. "It's not about the camera," she finally murmurs softly, and he watches her dig the heel of her hand into her eyes. "It's not about the camera, Peter."

Peter thinks of gifts in his closet (of things he can never give her) and is pathetically glad she isn't meeting his eyes.

"I grabbed the first thing I saw—"

"Yeah, I know," and there's another awkward silence, heavy in a terrible way, so overwhelming that he hates himself for letting it go on, for not saying anything. "What was that?" she at last demands and she's still not looking at him and he's not sure if she's hiding herself from him or for him.

"I just thought they should know…" he starts but he trails off because she suddenly drops her hand and stares at him with bitter amusement and it takes everything he has not to go invisible and run out, flee to keep from thinking about the inevitable.

After Paris, after he has her and has to come back to the family, after he forces himself to be an uncle—

Just the thought of it is more than he can really take, leaves him feeling sick to his stomach, hollowed out and empty because it's too much to handle, the thought of having her for even a little while and then not.

He knows what he wants, and it's agonizing, the idea of having it and then losing it again.

They're so simple they hurt, the little things he wants— he wants to bury his face in her neck in the nights and fall asleep to the sound of her breathing as she tells him about her day. Wants to wake up next to her, bad morning breath and all, curl up around her and savor it, even when the sheets strangle him because he keeps scooting closer to her in the night.

They can have that, if she's just patient, lets him handle this…

"Peter—"

"I know what I'm doing—" he blurts hastily, not wanting to hear her say anything else, not wanting to talk about that unhappy fact, not after all this and after he finally has a plan— "You just have to give me a little bit more time, a few more days and then we'll go from there, figure it out as we go along—"

"I don't want to," and even though he knows what she really means, it still causes a jolt of panic inside him— the idea that she's truly tired of trying, the mere idea that she's actually ready to give up. "I don't want to do this anymore," she hisses, voice so soft nobody outside of the room could possibly hear her. When he tries to touch her arm, not sure what to do but wanting to help, she just twists herself away, eyes going soft for a heartbeat at the way he flinches back, impossibly stung. "It's not fair— this isn't fair."

"Claire," he pleads but she shakes her head, looking away, forcing him to finally drop his hands at his sides, wounded.

Silence, again, so heavy that he almost chokes on it.

"We can tell Nathan, and then—"

"No," he says immediately— and then, "no, Claire!" when she opens her mouth again, her face flushing.

Peter watches, oddly dull inside, as she snaps her mouth shut and lets out a long breath through her nose, stiff-shouldered in her frustration. She looks like herself for a moment, looks like she's going to shove him out of the way and just tell Nathan herself but then her face crumbles and she drops her head, body seeming to deflate in a way that he would never be able to explain to anyone.

"Claire, please—" and, fuck, he wishes she wouldn't look like this— small and fragile, breakable.

Peter touches her before he can stop himself, managing to just barely brush his fingers across a wet face before she wrenches herself away, a hard movement that guts him in a way that nothing physical ever could. She stares at the wall for a moment before she flicks her eyes back to him, anger and hurt leaving her gaze overly bright.

For a moment, he sees the brilliant-eyed cheerleader that had crashed into his life in such an exhilarating way, had destroyed his life and built it back up again in a single heartbeat. But the image only lasts for a moment because her eyes aren't as brilliant as they once were, slightly raw with too much emotion for any one person to feel and her smile's somehow even more heartbreaking than any person's should be.

He wonders, vaguely, how much all of this has changed him— if he's showing the effects the way she is.

And he knows without any doubt that he is, that his eyes are going dull and his voice is going quiet and he's tired.

"I can't do this right now— Later—" she finally whispers and he wonders if she has any idea of how easily she breaks his heart.

"Claire, please don't go—"

But she's already moving fast, half-tripping in her haste to get away from him, somehow still looking like she's his.

Peter stands there silently as he watches her unlock the door and open it, duck through and slam it shut behind her, aware of how easily he can hold her back and unwilling to do it. He's too raw, worn down inside and exhausted with emotion so he listens to her footsteps fade away— and then forces himself not to listen to anything else after that.

Only after several minutes does he realize dully that she's left him in her room.

It doesn't feel like her room, so he drops onto the bed with a swear at his own fucked-up mental state, regrets it with a savage twist in his chest when he realizes that he just dropped onto Claire's bed, the bed that Claire always sleeps on when she comes back for her visits.

Not just any bed, but Claire's—

"You are so fucked," he sighs to himself but stretches out anyway, takes in a greedy breath.

Claire doesn't wear much perfume (she makes so many faces when somebody around her wears too much that he usually ends up teary-eyed with his attempts not to laugh) but he knows she likes lotions, lazy scents that always leave him feeling a bit drunk every time he's close enough to pick them up.

He wonders just how many of her lotions she wears usually, what different areas of skin she rubs them into—

When she wakes up in the mornings, after her shower, wet hair still wrapped up in her favorite old towel?

"So fucked," he assures himself, hoping to drive the point home even as he pulls her pillow over and buries his face into it, breath catching in his throat at the vicious pain the scent of it causes inside him. Not just lotion, he realizes, but shampoo too— that run of the mill shampoo that she insists is just as good as the fancy stuff every other woman he knows buys.

Excruciating but still incredible, what she does to him, something that he can wrap himself in and savor.

It's so strong (her scent— her lotion, her shampoo and her) that for a moment he pretends—

"You're so completely fucked," he whispers one last time into Claire's pillow as he reaches blindly behind him, grabbing a handful of the blankets and pulling them carelessly across him, not caring that he's fully dressed and still wearing his shoes.

Peter imagines Claire plastered against him, bare skin against his, her breath tickling the hair at the back of his neck—

_So fucked_, he thinks as he closes his eyes and finally falls asleep, drained.

-

_And, finally, we're heading to Paris now... no, I'm serious, we're getting a bit with Angela, and then off to Paris we go, heh..._


	10. Nine

Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: Provided by the most awesome **gidgetzb**  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue.

-

**Nine**

-

_Peter knows he's dreaming._

_But it's a dream that really happened, so he doesn't fight against it._

_It had already been awkward between them when Claire lost the Bennets, and he'd already been ducking her._

_But when he gets the call past midnight from Matt Parkman with the horrible news, he doesn't think, fear forgotten, washed away in his desperation to help her. It's almost instinctual and so he just goes to her, heart stuttering in his chest as she raises her head to stare at him, golden hair tinted red falling around a too-pale face._

_And there's a knot of horrible guilt in his middle as she stares up at him, when she hesitates because he's been ducking her, dodging her, trying to ignore her any way he can—_

_And again, he doesn't think— can't._

_He doesn't even manage to get his arms completely open before she's twisting upwards into them, uncoiling herself from the chair to curl up against him, face mashing into his shirt as fingers knot into his back. She clings to him, beginning to pant into his shoulder, small body shuddering from emotion as he cradles the back of her skull and holds her tightly as she begins to come undone in a way that makes everything else around him fade._

_There's only Claire sobbing in his arms, and she's all there is, bloodied and falling apart._

_When she begins to bend, to buckle, to sink down as her sobs become hoarse hysterical cries, he just moves with her, bends and allows her to pool into his hold as the last little bit of her strength leaves her. Keeps a steady hold on her and doesn't move even though the position is beginning to make his back ache when she shifts upward and clings to him and his shirt's already soaked but he doesn't care._

_Claire's grief is tangible, visceral, and he can't fight and doesn't even want to because it's Claire's._

-

Peter wakes up with a jolt of awareness, heart tight in his chest as his eyes flare open to take in a darkened bedroom that isn't his, inhaling a scent that slides through him like liquid heat. It's more than sexual (more than any one thing he's ever felt before in his life) and it leaves him feeling wired and drowsy at the same time.

He wants to breathe it in deeply, savor it—

It finally sinks in a few seconds after that, the rush of realization that he's curled up in his niece's bed.

He tries to bring up disgust, tries to bring up revulsion but he feels too safe where he is, wrapped up in Claire's bed and even though there's nothing of Clare in the room itself, her scent is overwhelming and devastating to his control. It curls inside him and settles there like everything else she's ever given him, and he closes his eyes for a moment, weak-willed.

Then he wonders where Claire is, and he's awake after that, worried as he glances at the dark sky outside the window.

He strains his ears, picks on everyone but her in the mansion, so he struggles out from under the covers, staggers to his feet and hesitates, swallowing, feeling chilled now that he's away from her scent. Then he reaches up to scratch his cheek and swallows when it floods him again, now clinging to his sleeve, a heady mixture of his own and hers— mingling into something else entirely.

Something that takes his breath away, something that leaves him feeling dizzy with how aware he is of it.

But Peter doesn't know where Claire is and he's tense from memories of a broken girl in a hospital, muffled sobs on his shoulder so he firmly drops his arm and tries not to breathe too deeply. Slips out of her bedroom and moves carefully down the hall, finding the mansion impossibly quiet around him.

Claire isn't there (cuts into him like glass under his skin) and he feels it even as he listens for her, feels the hollow quality that now permeates his life when she's not somewhere near him, not close enough that he can easily touch her if he wants, if he would ever let himself without holding back in any way.

He steps into the front room and rocks back on his heels as his mother glances up from her reading to stare at him, that unnerving stare he's always been so utterly shaken by, a steady look that snares him and keeps him still. He still doesn't know what his mother does, almost doesn't care anymore (cares about nothing but Claire) and doesn't know what the information would be useful for anyway.

But Peter's always had his suspicion, and he's reminded of that suspicion as she glances at him now, studies him.

"What?"

"Have a good sleep?" and she's smiling slightly, that little smile that used to comfort him when he was young (because it meant she knew how to handle anything that popped up) and now leaves him feeling unnerved because it means that she knows things she shouldn't know. When he doesn't say anything, couldn't even if he wanted to, she shakes her head and smiles more broadly as if she finds him amusing.

Peter still can't say anything because he knows he's rumpled and is carrying Claire's scent and even though his mother is all the way across the room, he's certain that she must pick up on it, be aware of it the way she is of everything so he just stands there, feeling like some kind of small animal, helpless—

"You look like an idiot," she tells him then with her familiar blunt grace and he jerks in a quick breath, realizing he hasn't filled his lungs in too many heartbeats, frozen as he is by his mother's guileless gaze. She shifts the letter she's writing, makes a slight face as she crosses something out and writes something new. "You really should be careful about looking like a deer in the headlights, Peter; makes a person want to put their foot on the gas."

It's an old joke just between them, and it wrenches his heart in his chest because he hasn't heard it in years…

Because there's something dark under the joke now, something that he doesn't like to think about.

Peter swallows, trying to regain his balance, but he can't because now she's staring at him with a (sincere) smile that cuts him and deep eyes that pin him where he stands. He watches her lace her fingers and flex her knuckles, watches her arch her neck and tighten her shoulders in that same slow stretch that Nathan does so often when he's stressed, the habit neither he nor Claire seem to have inherited.

"Claire went out a little while ago," she sighs as she drops her gaze back to whatever it is she's working on, taps her pen against the table absently. "Called Nathan about an hour ago, and told him your plans," she adds, and flicks a glance up at him, that same little smile as before, the one that overwhelms him so badly. "Leaving for your little vacation so soon, dear?"

"Yeah…" and then he doesn't say anything else because he can't think of anything else to say.

"Are you really this selfish, Peter?"

Startled, dazed, he jerks in another breath and tries to tear his eyes from hers, tries to look anywhere but at her. But he can only stand there and stare at her helplessly, his sharp-voiced mother with her clear eyes and her secret smile, staring at him as if he's the most tragic thing she's ever seen, as if he's breaking whatever is left of her heart.

"I'm not—" he manages, but she shakes her head again, smiles with a sad kind of humor.

"You could never lie to me— Claire can, when she has to, but not you, never you," she says, blunt again but still soft, whatever it was she was writing forgotten, back straight and eyes clear. "According to Claire, and told to me through your brother, you two are heading to Paris within the next several days. I'm curious, though… will you be staying for several weeks?"

Peter can't speak, so he nods dumbly, blankly.

"And will you be coming back?"

"I don't understand—" he starts but he fumbles over the words, finds them tangling in his throat (like his fingers in Claire's hair) and he staggers toward his mother, remembering how good she had always been at making him feel better, helping him make sense of things. "Ma, I don't know what to do—" and he clamps his mouth shut, bites his tongue because he can't trust his mother, not anymore.

"You will never know how much I have done to keep this family together," she tells him flatly, and he stops, swallows, feeling dull inside. "I held onto your father as long as I could," she continues softly, quietly, "and when he stopped holding on, Peter…" and it's brutal, the sudden emotion in her eyes when she stares at him.

"Ma—"

But his mother changes suddenly, pushes back her chair and twists to her feet with grace even young people rarely possess, smoothing her fingers across the letter as she folds it up, stares at him with a tiny brittle grin that breaks his heart. "There are some lines that you cannot straddle, Peter, and there are always going to be sacrifices when you make the important choices— no matter what you choose, there will always be sacrifices."

"Maybe—"

"It's never a maybe, not for anyone but especially not people like us—"

Again the words tangle in his throat, leave him speechless as he struggles to defend himself, to deny things that he still can't deal with, shifts on his feet and gasps in short breaths that burn his lungs. "Ma, you don't—"

"Don't wait too long," she sighs tiredly, arching slightly to plant a quick kiss on his forehead and smoothes her fingers across his cheek in a way she hasn't since he was ten years old. "For once in your life, honey, take your mother's advice," and then she's gone, slipping past him and up the stairs with the letter in her hands, and he doesn't go after her, can't make his feet move.

He stands there for a long time, dazed, feeling wired and exhausted at the same time.

That night when he falls asleep in his own bed, he still smells like Claire; when he falls asleep, he dreams of his brother telling him to hurry up and cross the street already so they could all move on, and Claire's on the other side, staring at him as if he's the most tragic thing she's ever seen, as if he's breaking her heart.

Peter starts packing the next morning, and starts counting down the days.

-

_Notes: I am well aware of how much fail I am made of right now in the long space between updates. Suffice it to say that my Paire muse died following a certain second season that gave me nothing big for it to be fed on and a new fascination for using Claire in a million billion other pairings like Adam/Claire and Elle/Claire - that said, I'm writing easily again and, yes, this thing's getting finished. So, just, give me a bit of patience as we go full speed ahead into France, New Years Eve, brotherly confessions and the eventual giving of gifts..._


	11. Ten

Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: frellingblonde  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue.

-

**Ten**

-

_Peter remembers jumping off his father's desk when he was five years old._

_There had been a cape involved, and Peter's obsession with flying had already kicked in._

_It had been his brother, studying in the room down the hall, who had come rushing at his shout of pain, scooped him up and set him on the desk and catalogued each body part, face sickeningly pale (tight with panic) before he realized that Peter was fine and went off on Peter for doing such an "incredibly stupid" thing. Even that young, Peter had realized where the anger came from, why Nathan was only ever truly angry with a few people around him, why he was always far more upset (emotional) with Peter than anyone else._

_Peter's always known one thing for sure in his life, one utter certainty and that is the simple fact that Nathan loves him, completely and totally and despite everything, it's the one thing that he's never once doubted._

_The hours before the explosion (his mother and his brother and the doubt that had crept in) had shaken that belief but his brother had pulled through, had been the man who had checked him for injuries years before._

_His brother loves him, even if he's usually too harsh to show it in ways that other people can see._

_Peter loves his brother, completely and totally._

_But in his heart of hearts, he knows he's just using Nathan as an excuse, a wall between himself and Claire, between himself and what he knows is inevitable, this connection that blood can strain but not break._

_What he knows is wrong even though it doesn't feel wrong._

_His brother's kept him from doing stupid things before, caught him when he fell before._

_This time isn't supposed to be different._

-

Claire's trying to avoid him, and he's trying to help.

Because if he thinks about this too much, he knows, he won't get on the plane with her.

He'll run again, faster and farther than before, and he's horribly convinced that she won't run after him anymore.

So he doesn't go into the kitchen to make his lunch unless he knows she's somewhere else in the house and there's no chance of ambushing her. He makes sure he's busy with work his heart isn't in and stays out of the house when it's time for dinner so that there'll be no awkward glances across the table. He blasts music through his headphones when he goes to bed (not that it does any good, it's so easy to focus on her past the sound). He tries not to be alone on their floor or glance into the open door of her room when he walks past.

Key word in the last instance being tries.

Because this is where he always fails, where his control slips and he looks through a door that's always open when he walks by. Sometimes she's sleeping, napping, hair tangled and cheek pillowed on an arm; other times she's restlessly going through her few possessions she brought with her as if she's actually focused on them.

Today, she's packing them all up, music drifting from the laptop on the desk against the wall as she folds and unfolds and refolds her clothes, face blank until she notices him (she always does) and then it tightens. Under the music, her heartbeat quickens, breathing changing as he stares and can't look away, weakened by the sudden familiarity of the image.

For a moment, she looks younger and softer (scared but strong) as she packed according to his mother's instructions, white blouse looking too pristine against the dark wood of the home he'd never truly fit into.

Things had been simpler then even though they hadn't been at the same time. It had been the two of them against the world, and for all the fear he'd felt then, so much of it had been focused on her and somehow keeping her safe in the chaos. Keeping safe this girl at his side who understood him without even knowing him, made him feel like some missing piece had finally been slid into place.

"Packing isn't this fascinating."

_You are_, but he doesn't say that because her voice is already strained (and he doesn't think he'd be able to get the words out anyway) and he doesn't want to upset her even more.

So instead he stands in the doorway and takes her in silently, too aware of how she's changed since that day years before, pretty youth sharpened into a woman's grace, softest curves edged down over time. It's deeper than that, though, shows itself through bleakness in her eyes and tightness to her form that's not supposed to be there.

"Need help?"

He doesn't mean to ask but the words slip out and he swallows and bites his tongue until he tastes blood, bites harder when she pauses and the line of her shoulders stiffens, his back straightening in a subtle way he's acutely come to recognize. He knows, instinctively, how to make her loosen again, the way to slide his palm up her spine to make the tension in her muscles ease.

Peter used to do it all the time, would trail his fingers up her spine and pull her to him and stroke her hair and just hold her while he pretended that she was only a niece to him. Would do it as long as he could until it became too much and he had to pull away, had to excuse himself and try to remind himself that uncles didn't feel like this about their nieces and breathe through the pain of the separation.

(And it's such a stupid cliché but it's true.)

His fingers itch with the urge to follow those instincts and she's staring at him, lips colorless and eyes wide.

"I don't need your help."

"Of course not," he agrees and steps forward and then stops himself, taking a breath and then pushing it out.

Claire swallows, frowns and stares down at the clothes as she folds and unfolds and refolds, as she doesn't meet his eyes and doesn't order him out and doesn't speak to him. His feet betray him (it's the only way he can let himself think about what he's doing) and he takes another steps towards her, finds himself inside her room instead of just peering in.

They haven't talked about the important stuff (not about this or France or what happens when they get there or what happens after France) or the useless stuff (half-hearted joking over Nathan's inability to not smile like a politician when he wants something from them) and he misses even that, misses useless conversations that they couldn't have with anyone else.

He doesn't want it to be like this and also he doesn't know how he wants it to be but that's not true either because he knows what he wants and he knows that what he wants is wrong, sick, will send him to hell no matter how many people he may save before he gets there. He's a son of a bitch who wakes up aching in the nights with her name tangled up in his throat like the sheets around him, skin flushed and feeling hollow in a way that he knows how to fix.

Another step and there's only the bed between them and she's staring at him, teeth biting into her bottom lip.

"Need anything?"

"No," she says but she's nodding at the same time as she knots her fingers into a delicate blouse, ruins the silk.

White, he notices as a bitter laugh simmers in his middle— and he remembers how her hair had looked dark gold against the other white blouse, the nervous expression on a young face as she stood and packed and then hesitated at his words because she had believed him even if it scared her.

_I'm sorry_, he wants to say, words choking him, _I'm sorry and I hate this and I love you and I wish I was a better man for you because you deserve more than this—_

They haven't done anything, haven't touched but it's intimate, the way they're staring at each other across the bed, the quiet way they're breathing and how completely aware he is of how much he wants to touch her. Trail fingers up her arms to cradle the curve of her neck and it would be easy when his control came undone and she wouldn't hesitate because she wants this as much as he does even if she's scared of what comes after—

At some point in the last few years, she's become braver (better and stronger) than he is.

"I'm not coming back," she tells him quietly and he swallows and doesn't say anything. "This is my last visit," she continues as she twists the silk blouse first one way and then the other, licks her lips. "I'm staying in France from now on because I don't want to do this anymore." A pause and she looks at him, meets his eyes. "I'll send you your gifts by mail."

Claire's sure he's coming back and the sane part of him needs that to be the truth even if it's not what he wants.

He imagines the loss of control that a part of him knows is inevitable, a body moving easily against his, quickened breathing and a thundering heartbeat, nails gripping his arms as she arches, tightens, and groans his name in a way that he's fantasized about and hates himself for being able to picture so easily. And he imagines after, pushing damp hair off a flushed face and smoothing fingers over a hip and then around to stroke her spine.

Somehow, it's the second fantasy that scares him the most, what comes after that loss of control.

"I'm not— I'm staying with you."

"Right," she laughs, and it's a strangled sound that slices deep.

And he wants to assure her but he can't because he wants to pull away and remind himself that she's his niece and this is wrong, sick, and that it doesn't matter how right it may feel because he _can't_ lose control. "If you need anything—"

"I'm a big girl, I can pack by myself," and she doesn't look at him and he knows he's been dismissed.

"Okay," he says, and then— "I'm just down the hall," and he doesn't know why he says that, swallows at the way her eyes fly up to study him, go soft and turn wary at the same time. He freezes, hesitates, but then walks out slowly and shuts her door behind him and flees to his room to pretend that he needs to pack even though he's been packed for two days.

When he hears her door swing open behind him and he knows she's watching him so he doesn't let himself look back, just shuts and locks his door to keep her out and leans there and breathes through the pain.

(Peter hates when stupid clichés are true.)


	12. Eleven

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Beta: frellingblonde  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

-

**Eleven**

**-**

_After she loses her family, Claire wants physical comfort._

_It's natural that she comes to Peter to get it, he knows, remembering how easy it always was to become physical with this girl, to touch her without any hesitation and feel a small hand touch him in return. He remembers holding her hand in the hours before the explosion, reaching back as they ran through New York to check she was still there even though he could hear her, not assured until fingers fluttered against his, steadied him again._

_The girl from Texas he felt such a devastating connection to, the cheerleader from a painting he saved._

_When she knows he's going to be off for the day, she takes a cab and shows up at his apartment with a bag of the basics, moves in for the night as he fumbles and tries to make sense of it all. She dresses in what she calls her real clothes, sweat pants and tank tops, padding around with bare feet and a determination that seems restless. He lets her have the bed, takes the couch and lies awake the whole night feeling like a son of a bitch even though he hasn't actually done anything wrong. This is what a good family member does, and he's always been the good family member in his family._

_But every time he touches her, he feels like he's taking advantage of her._

_She's grieving and when she comes to him, he wraps his arms around her even though she doesn't feel like family._

_On the rare days when he truly pushes back those reservations and settles onto the couch with her to watch whatever movie she brought with her, she tucks herself against his side and sits silent, thigh pressing against his, blonde hair carefully pulled back. But she keeps moving, her upper half sliding down until she's finally stretched out, head on his thigh._

_He can convince himself that it doesn't mean anything until she gets up after the movie's over to put it away and glances back at him a few times, quick darting looks that leave him flustered. Niece, he reminds himself desperately, but it doesn't help that much because the words don't mean anything compared to everything he's feeling._

_He holds out as well as he can._

_And when his reservations become a furious but silent panic, choosing flight over fight, she doesn't handle it well._

_She bakes and she goes to the gym for long hours on end, tries to go to school but can't focus, spends her spare time trying to help the others even as they insist that she can't do that much with her power, certainly not be as useful as those like Niki or Matt. She becomes a hermit until she realizes that he really is pushing her away and then she becomes a hermit in her own apartment, one rented on Nathan's dime._

_He worries._

_Finds himself reaching out before he pulls back every time, fear winning out over instinct._

_He knows that he's the one that drives her to France, exhausted after too much that she can't handle, hates himself more than he ever has before when he gives in and helps her pack, sees her off while her smile becomes more frantic and her eyes become increasingly brilliant in the bright lights of the airport._

_He knows he's the one who's responsible for twisting Claire into the woman she is now._

-

Nathan trusts Peter with Claire, trusts his little brother with his daughter more than he trusts himself.

Peter almost hates him for it, tries not to let it show as he watches his brother exchange cautious goodbyes with Claire a few feet away, as he tries and fails to stare at the swarm of crazed holiday travelers around him rather than this goodbye that Nathan doesn't know is final. Claire's hair looks darker than usual against the white of her coat, her shoulders more hunched than usual as she manages a weak but sincere smile and a little laugh.

Nathan glances at him then, flicker of relief entering his eyes, and the hate spikes up more viciously.

Nathan had always been able to tell when he had a crush on a girl, had always read Peter easily in the important moments, but he doesn't seem aware of anything odd between his brother and his daughter, simply tries to pull them together because he's so sure that Peter is the one who can help Claire be herself again.

Because he knows he's not capable of being what Claire needs right now.

Peter wants to think it's denseness, a lack of awareness, but it's not.

Nathan simply understands himself, simply trusts Peter.

"You need anything and you just call," his brother tells him quietly when he comes over and Peter nods because he can't speak, watches Claire fiddle with her bag and stare anywhere but at them. Standing among the crowd and at this distance, Claire looks older than she actually is, a small but well-built woman shifting her carry-on and waiting as if she's just waiting to get on the plane and they're not…

He's going on vacation.

But this isn't a vacation.

"Pete."

He jerks and finds Nathan staring at him hard, dark eyes darker than usual. "What?"

"Take care of each other," his big brother states after a tenuous heartbeat. "You two… well, you two are better with each other than the rest of us are with you two," he finishes dryly, something that would have been amusement in anyone else twisting the corner of his mouth.

"I know," Peter finally assures him, and feels like an idiot for wanting to bolt right there in the airport.

Past Nathan, Claire stares at him hard, and he feels sick to his stomach as he hefts his bag and starts moving.

-

Peter decides after the first two hours that he's never been on such a horrible and awkward flight.

His book sits in his lap, untouched, and Claire's sitting and playing with her iPod, scrolling through shows and songs and pictures as if the little player is the single most fascinating thing she's ever seen and, god, only _Claire_ would be able to pull off having a bright pink iPod, really.

They glance at each other every few minutes, carefully blank looks, and then look away again.

Past Claire's head, the sky outside the window is bright and he swallows at the awkward urge he has to teleport out of the plane, fly off to some place where things might make sense again. That place doesn't exist, he knows, but the urge is overwhelming, leaves him to focus on breathing because he can only control himself when she's not around and she's sitting right next to himself looking small, a mix of hope and bitterness in her eyes.

Claire looks at him again, scrolling silently on the little pink machine, and he drops his gaze to his book, flips through it absently, nodding as if he finds it fascinating even though the words are blurring together.

When he looks up again, wary, Claire's the one staring bleakly out the window.

He wants to apologize but he's not sure what he wants to apologize for, only that he's guilt-ridden.

Or maybe it's everything, how bad things have gotten, how bad he's let them all get.

He still doesn't even know…

Peter tries to picture it, the two of them together, and it's too easy, everything fitting together so fast it's frightening.

Fingers gripping his book too tightly, he tries to picture turning his back on it, not the frantic push and pull he's stuck in but a real ending, pushing Claire back and moving on, finding someone that looks a little like her that he can… pretend with in the moments when his resolve weakens and he wants to go back.

He can't picture it, not beyond the sketchy basics.

Because Claire's with him even when she's somewhere else, a constant and unwavering presence deep inside that's only become more intense as the years went by. He tries to buy his family presents and he just spends those hours thinking about what she'd like; he tries to take a day off work, and he spends the day on the couch miserable watching WE because she liked watching that even though she spent most of her time complaining about it.

Maybe that's why he's never managed to do the right thing, because it's impossible.

"Where do you want to go?"

"What?" he asks blankly, and Claire coughs, shrugs awkwardly.

"France… vacation, stinky cheese and funny hats… Where do you want to go?"

It's an impossible question and he watches her, seeing the hazy emotion under her stare.

"A museum?" he finally suggests, and gets a weird look in return, Claire squinting at him as if he's an idiot. "A park," he adds dryly, what he would usually want to see and what she knows he would, and she relaxes a little even as she seems to give up on her iPod, tucking it away and sitting back again, palms settling awkwardly on her thighs.

The uncomfortable silence returns, and he flips through the book a bit, just to keep up appearances.

"Peter?"

He pauses, bites his lip and then gives up, putting the book away. "Yes?"

"I missed you."

He knows that, understands the weight in the quiet words too well, but now she glances at him, torn between hope and panic, and everything inside him is allowed to settle for just a moment. It just lasts a second— no, less, less than a heartbeat before the sick fear bubbles back up— but he takes a breath, feels a vague flicker of relief.

She's bitter now, hardened, but she stares at him with her heart in her eyes and it's enough for right now.

His life isn't completely over yet.


	13. Twelve

_Title: Lines  
Pairing: Peter/Claire  
Disclaimer: Um, nope, don't own them!  
Rating: NC-17 (sex, language, adult themes)  
Warnings: Canon incest, and, um, a whole lot of angst?  
Timeline: AU as of S1 finale, a good four years into the future, because, yep, I'm obsessed.  
Teaser: Claire finally gets sick of pretending, Peter finally gets a clue._

_Notes: **twistdmentality** is made of epic awesome. Tell her thank you for petting me and my muse when we needed it most, ;-)_

-

**Twelve**

**-**

Claire is comfortable in France in a way she isn't in New York.

The truth is startling, throws him more than he knows it should.

Even as they're getting off the plane, her mood changes, face losing some of its tightness and movements becoming smoother, heeled boots eating the ground as she moves easily past him (her arm brushes his and there's a little jolt he refuses to admit even to himself) and takes off to get their luggage. They don't have much, only what she brought to New York and what he threw together before.

He watches her as he trails along behind, remembers when she was like this all the time.

Alert, balanced, ready to charge into anything, not like the worn-out woman she is now.

There's a tiny flicker of envy is his stomach, small but growing bigger as he watches.

He's not at all sure how to deal with the realization that he's jealous of a country because they get a living woman who walks through a crowd as if she owns them and he gets a broken shell of a girl he's not supposed to want (need) as much as he does.

Or maybe it's just karma for the fact that he wants her as much as he does.

She grabs her luggage and reaches for his, only to jerk fast to the left when he reaches to grab it instead, avoiding his gaze as she steps back and further away, tossing blonde hair over a shoulder as he eyes her luggage warily. He's supposed to carry it for her, thirty years of being told to be a gentleman rising up fast inside, but he knows her better than that.

The way she's gripping it leaves him sure that she'd kick him if he tried to help her.

It's the kind of thing the old Claire, this Claire, would do if he annoyed her.

The fact only makes him want to grab the luggage from her more.

But in the end, when she spins and flees the moment, he just follows silently.

Things will be better soon.

-

It takes Peter only three seconds standing in Claire's penthouse to decide that this is Claire's _home_.

She's made it her own in a way that's jarring— there's a media center that takes up one side of the wall by the television, DVDs and CDs carefully arranged. A few books are sitting on the coffee table, bright-colored post-it notes tucked between the pages acting as apparent bookmarks. The remote is lying on top of one, and even as he stands watching she grabs it and flicks the television on, flipping channels until she lands on the news.

But what gets his attention most, drags it from her as she stares at him warily, are the pictures.

Lots and lots of pictures.

Images of the girl from Texas that existed before that life ended, family pictures carefully arranged. Shots of her when she was younger, tangled up in Sandra's arms and helping to hold little Lyle when he was first brought home in a bright blue cap; an array of images of her and her father, a strong-faced man who smiled brilliantly down at her, arm wrapped protectively around her. There was even an image of her and Mr. Muggles, the picture making Peter smile helplessly.

That dog had hated him, started barking and yapping the first time he saw Peter.

"He's just jealous," Sandra had told him pleasantly the few times that Peter had gone to their house before it all ended, gathering up the little dog as it glared at Peter from her arms, sharp eyes warning him. "Claire's always been his favorite, you know. This little guy barks at every single friend she brings home, follows them around the house giving them his stink-eye until they leave."

Peter had liked Sandra even if he had never gotten the chance to know her all that well.

"My place isn't this fascinating."

"Sorry," he manages, but isn't able to tear his eyes away, moving a bit to peer into new directions, seeing what looks like a fridge through a wide doorway. Yep, it's a fridge, polished steel when he looks more deeply into the room. The kitchen's organized, looks clean but not at all empty, a few pictures and post-it notes sticking to the fridge.

He always forgets how much she likes using post-it notes for _everything_.

Obsessed with them, does everything with them.

"Peter."

"Sorry," he repeats but she just looks uneasy, palms flat against her thighs.

He wants to explore, wants to go through her home because _this_, the pictures and the notes and the home itself, is Claire (this is how she's supposed to be).

She has a life here, a real life, and he wants to be a part of it in at least some way, even if it's only by looking around.

"Peter—"

He glances at her, finds her standing nervously in the middle of the room as she stares at him expectantly, clearly unsure what he's going to do and just as clearly desperate for him to do _something_. Swallowing, eyes moving to the pictures again, he rocks on his feet as he tries to get a breath, tries to think, tries to process the fact that he's off the plane and in France and in Claire's home.

When it sinks in, it leaves him panicked, lungs closing.

They're alone, and Nathan won't call for a few hours more, he knows.

They won't even be going out anywhere for a few days, he knows.

"I should go," he manages past the pull he feels deep inside, the urge to stay with her, to just be here.

She gives him a bleak look, hurt clearly etched across her previously relaxed features, but he turns away, sure somehow that if he doesn't leave now, he won't be able to and he needs to think, needs to remind himself that he needs to think.

He can't think with Claire.

That's the whole problem.

So he flashes her one last tight smile (he just needs to think) and flees her penthouse as she stares after him, mouth tight.

-

His penthouse is less than homely.

It's wonderful, certainly, but it's missing any real warmth.

There are no pictures, no sign of any real life, and though stocked, none of it is his.

Peter opens his bags, stares at their contents intently for a long time, but then leaves them sitting on his bed as he looks through his temporary home, opening closets and searching out any sign of anything beyond an expensive place that the family owns.

Claire's place felt more like home for just a few minutes than this has in the last hour since he's pushed his way in.

He flips on the television, stares at it blankly before turning away, wandering through the kitchen.

Lots of food (his favorites, he notices with a grimace he can't help) in a fridge that looks otherwise bare.

The place is empty, just a place to stay.

It's disquieting, the realization that it feels no different from when he goes home after work to his apartment in New York.

Heart beating a bit too painfully in his chest, he finally heads back to the bedroom and starts pulling his things out to spread across the bed in a fit of carefully controlled boredom, counts through the items and then does it again.

He pointedly ignores the stuffed bear glaring up at him from where he had been buried beneath his clothes.

Not that it works.

He wonders where Claire keeps her bears, knows that she would never give them up now— he imagines an area where she keeps them where she can see them, her own private altar to her family, stuffed bears to keep old photos company in the night.

Guilt-ridden, disgusted with himself for getting this whole thing started, for not stopping it when it first started (as if he could have), he finally zips the little guy up alone and stalks to the living room, sits on the couch watching television until his eyelids droop.

But he doesn't sleep.

Instead, he listens to Claire move around her home, unpacking her things, her breathing sounding increasingly ragged.

Listens to her finally climb into the shower and twist the water on high, the sound muffling her movements just enough that he can pretend she's just in there to clean off, that she's not hiding in there crying silently the way he's sure she is.

It's no less devastating than her holiday visits to the mansion, feels the same.

It all feels the same.

When Nathan calls, he doesn't answer, just listens to the sounds across the distance.

Nothing's any better yet.


End file.
